Listeners to today’s “Good Morning Scotland” were treated (from 2h 7m at that link) to a consummate masterclass in the art of evasion from Labour’s Scottish branch-office manager Jim Murphy. The bulk of a 13-minute segment was devoted to Murphy’s claim that a Labour vote in this May’s general election would bring about an end to foodbanks in Scotland, although the pledge steadily degraded as interviewer Gary Robertson pressed fruitlessly for detail.
(Murphy refused to say if or when any money generated by a Labour UK government would be given to the Scottish Government, wouldn’t be drawn on when the need for foodbanks would be eradicated, shot down a straw man on benefit sanctions and eventually conceded that in fact there would always be foodbanks, by way of a brief diversion to “I do a lot of work for charity but I don’t like to talk about it”.)
Jim Murphy’s practiced air of nonchalant bonhomie was coming apart at the seams all over today’s “Good Morning Scotland” (from 2h 10m). Pressed hard by presenter Bill Whiteford, the beleaguered Scottish Labour branch manager spluttered and blustered and interrupted constantly in a desperate attempt to stop Whiteford from even finishing any questions, never mind getting answers to them.
Murphy tried determinedly and repeatedly to punt the hopelessly-discredited line about the biggest party forming the government, on the sole basis that it had always been the case before, seemingly unaware that the election wasn’t being held in the past. He even tried to use the recent catastrophic Ashcroft polls to Labour’s advantage.
You can marvel at the entire nine-minute trainwreck by clicking the link below. But let’s just pull out that one argument and take a closer look at it.
The election of Jim Murphy as branch office leader has so far failed to produce a shift in the party’s catastrophic polling figures north of the border, with most projections still suggesting that Labour’s Scottish seats will be reduced to single figures in May.
Last night we catalogued a series of its howlers since Murphy took over, culminating in a humiliating climbdown over some false claims about cancelled operations in the Scottish NHS. The party’s Scottish health spokeswoman Jenny Marra turned up on today’s Good Morning Scotland to discuss the subject, and in doing so demonstrated exactly why Scottish voters are deserting it in hundreds of thousands.
Only a few diehards in the press are still clinging this morning to the Labour fiction we exposed yesterday, namely the flat-out empirical falsehood that “the biggest party gets to form a government” in the event of a hung Parliament.
An alert reader pointed us today to this audio clip of Jim Murphy. It’s not tagged, but we THINK it’s from a Radio Clyde interview about three weeks ago which oddly didn’t seem to get picked up at the time by anyone in the media.
Below is a clip from today’s “Morning Call” on BBC Radio Scotland. Speaking (from 16m 24s on the full show) are SNP MSP Mark McDonald, presenter Kaye Adams and Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald. There are a couple of noteworthy moments.
A caller named “George” had rung in concerned that the SNP might be giving up on their goal of independence, and Adams invited Mark McDonald to set his mind at rest. Here’s what happened in the next three minutes.
We missed this on Sunday, because it was 17 minutes into on the short-lived and unlamented “Crossfire” (now binned for a Sunday edition of “Good Morning Scotland”) and therefore pretty much everyone in Scotland missed it. It’s former Labour minister Helen Liddell, or as we should properly address her, Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke.
We’ve spared you her subsequent painful bleating about a general election 35 years ago that she doesn’t seem to have quite gotten over, but we couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at her curious assessment of the referendum result, which we suspect fellow guest Andrew “Lallands Peat Worrier” Tickell was simply too stunned to react to.
Today we’ve become quite obsessed with Jim Murphy’s pathological avoidance of a straight answer to the question of whether income tax should be fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament or not. The BBC now has a report on his much-trailed speech in Glasgow, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First it’s worth having a listen to this.
It’s an interview taken from the “Pienaar’s Politics” podcast on Radio 5 Live earlier this month. And it makes for an intriguing study of the art of evasion.
Young Lochinvar on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Could the lawyers on here cruising silently beneath the surface as opposed to those pretending to be lawyers comment on…” Aug 26, 00:11
Mark Beggan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “If Charles had fallen on the field and the ringleaders were hung the outcome for the rest may have been…” Aug 25, 22:56
agentx on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “” Transparency campaigner Benjamin Harrop wrote to the force seeking the written statement Ms Sturgeon made to officers after she…” Aug 25, 22:53
Mark Beggan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “The Geneva convention had not been written at that time. Without trying to be being contentious, what else did they…” Aug 25, 22:41
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “C’moan boys, let’s see a fight over who gets possession of the Baton Of Erudition. Twat H is ancient, but…” Aug 25, 22:40
GM on Before Action: “Burning the quangos to the ground, man I would love to be here to witness it.” Aug 25, 21:58
Dan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “So what to do on a site that purports to want Scotland to return to self-governance… Wait for days for…” Aug 25, 21:57
Mark Beggan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “” Journalism is now a middle class hobby which is subsidized by their parents”” Aug 25, 21:42
Mark Beggan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “‘Fucks’ 3. ‘Yoonies’ 2 in the same sentence. ‘pish’ 2. ‘fuckwit’ 2. ‘Wanker’ 1. Thank you for your contribution to…” Aug 25, 21:32
Dan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Whoopsie, forgot to clip off the https:// in previous post link making vid embed.” Aug 25, 21:26
GM on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Swinney was well warned, He kent fine. The Smith Commission was a sham, containment.” Aug 25, 21:04
Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “@James – £1trn in oil extracted over 40 years produces an estimated tax revenue of £4-6bn per year, around 0.5%…” Aug 25, 20:53
Captain Caveman on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Get a Time Machine or a job, Fatso, preferably both. A shower would also be in order.” Aug 25, 20:09
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “It’s certainly near worthless when the current Scottish government at HR, the SNP and Green administration, has committed Scotland to…” Aug 25, 20:09
Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “None of those studies suggest that the overall mortality rate increased between 2010 and 2019, or up to 2025 (we…” Aug 25, 20:02
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““we have known for decades (if not centuries) that increasing poverty, reducing public services and taking away social security benefits…” Aug 25, 19:47
James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Ah. As expected. The unionists seasoned pish goes “naw it isnae” [that’s Scotch, Adrian] and “naw he didnae”. “….A country…” Aug 25, 19:30
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““austerity measures resulted in about 190,000 excess deaths, or a 3% increase in mortality rates, from 2010 to 2019, including…” Aug 25, 19:28
sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2025/01/24/are-uk-austerity-policies-social-murder/ “We argue that the hundreds of thousands of extra deaths seen in the UK between 2012 and 2019 (with…” Aug 25, 19:16
sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/35/2/235/8008562?login=false “Profound changes to mortality trends and inequalities were observed across both nations and all cities in the decade up…” Aug 25, 19:08
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “English version of a foody poem. Posted before, but a while since. “If you had seen this toast before it…” Aug 25, 19:02
sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2024/06/19/the-cost-of-austerity-how-spending-cuts-led-to-190000-excess-deaths/ “The austerity measures introduced by the UK government in 2010 had severe consequences for the British population. Yonatan Berman…” Aug 25, 19:00
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Your turn with the Baton Of Erudition is it?” Aug 25, 18:45
twathater on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Where the FUCK is engerlands barnet formula where the fuck is engerlands parliament, where the fuck is engerlands version of…” Aug 25, 18:10
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Ah, c’moan noo Aidan! Div ye want Indy or nae? If ye dae, swear blind tae abody that WM is…” Aug 25, 18:06
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “An interesting take on things, sam. Some people would rather kill themselves than have a more equitable allocation of scarce…” Aug 25, 17:49
Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “There has been no “extraordinary rise in mortality” across the UK, the mortality rate has decreased overall since 2010, and…” Aug 25, 17:41
Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““Typical factors: … Housing need and homelessness” Uh Oh. There’s 5.7 million UK households getting cash from the government to…” Aug 25, 17:34
