On Wednesday we highlighted a curious outbreak of mass hysteria in the Scottish press, when a whole clutch of its newspapers suddenly and inexplicably jumped on a six-month-old story that had been comprehensively debunked at the time and hadn’t become any more true.
The story was swiftly proven to be complete rubbish all over again, and some of the papers printed grudging and much less prominent pieces admitting it was nonsense (all gallantly blaming their source, some Buckingham Palace flunky gone rogue, rather than their own failure to check the facts).
We’ve noted on more than one occasion that the spectacular SNP surge since the referendum appears to have completely unhinged much of the Scottish and UK press. Having pumped out a vast avalanche of hysterical coverage which utterly failed to stop the Scottish electorate returning 56 SNPs out of 59, the papers have responded to the rebuff by simply turning the volume up.
But even by those standards, today has been special.
We watched the Labour leadership hustings this week with interest. The most striking aspect in our eyes was the warm reception afforded by the audience to left-wing outsider Jeremy Corbyn, who’s been almost uniformly discounted, sneered at and worse by the commentariat (with the notable exception of the Guardian’s Owen Jones) as a suicidal option fit only for a return to the days of the Militant Tendency.
The main reason cited by pundits for dismissing Corbyn out of hand is a perceived failure to speak to “aspiration”, which seems to have been defined for the purposes of the argument as “poor people who want to become Tories”.
The thinking runs that the unemployed and low-paid don’t want to be that way forever (reasonably enough), and that therefore there’s no point in Labour trying to redistribute wealth downwards, because nobody wants to see themselves as still being poor in the future, so they won’t see any benefit from it.
There are all manner of things morally and ideologically wrong with that approach, but they’re pretty obvious so we won’t bother spelling them out here. Perhaps a more compelling one, though, is that it’s a really stupid way to try to win an election.
A casual observer might perhaps wonder if JK Rowling, no longer writing books about wizards for children, simply wants to be noticed.
Twice in the space of a few weeks she’s appeared on newspaper front pages bleating piously about the terrible hordes of cyber- and other-nats. Yesterday the Independent, Telegraph, Scotsman, Herald, Daily Record and more all ran dismal, whiny pieces about her (entirely evidence-free) claims that the SNP was infested with mad, bitter Anglophobes just waiting for a signal to invade Derby again or something.
No particular barrage of abuse appears to have been unleashed upon the former author to provoke the outburst, but seemingly for a lack of anything better to do with her time she had a good old moan anyway and the press lapped it up.
And the reason it’s all so very tedious is that the papers might as well run stories claiming that there’s a chance of rain tomorrow.
Yesterday we highlighted a quote from Labour MP Kate Hoey about how the party secretly expects their next leader, whoever it is, to be in opposition for the next 10 years, meaning the UK will have a Conservative-led government for at least 15 years. Kate Hoey is on the Labour fringes, but today one of the front-runners for the leadership job proved her right.
Over and over again in the years leading up to the independence referendum, Scots were warned of the many dire consequences of voting Yes. Among the No campaign’s prime targets for scare tactics were subsidies for renewable energy.
UK government subsidies drying up certainly sounded like a scary prospect.
The first five words of “The Vow” – the solemn pledge made by all three UK party leaders on the eve of the independence referendum – are “The Scottish Parliament is permanent”. This is what happened in the House of Commons this evening when the UK government was asked to make good on that pledge.
With scarcely a moment’s pause for breath or reflection, the Unionist polity and media has seamlessly switched its focus to the elusive beast that is “Full Fiscal Autonomy”.
(The SNP thankfully seems to have swiftly dumped the silly and short-lived attempt to rebrand it “Full Fiscal Responsibility”.)
Having deemed the anti-independence “Project Fear” strategy a success because it won the referendum – seemingly oblivious to the fact that what it actually achieved was to turn a 30-point lead into a 10-point victory, at the cost of the annihilation of Unionist MPs in Scotland – the exact same tactics have been deployed against FFA.
And the main problem with that is that there are in fact two FFAs. And the Unionist side is fighting against the wrong one.
On the day Jim Murphy stands down as leader of the Labour Party North Britain branch office, we’d like to take this opportunity to offer our humble, heartfelt tribute to both him and the insightful political commentariat of Scotland.
Aidan on A matter of class: ““These arseholes will pick up on and try to make hay out of the slightest thing” Bringing someone’s daughter up…” Dec 27, 18:25
Dan on A matter of class: “And newby AiDan enters the chat… Get your programmers to read a bit further back, and you will see plenty…” Dec 27, 18:23
Northcode on A matter of class: ““Alert readers might be interested to know that the number of Scots claiming French as their mother tongue is the…” Dec 27, 18:15
Dan on A matter of class: “Keep ripping into this shite Northcode. 2 min vid on Bloomberg of Jim Rogers stating how Scotland’s oil props up…” Dec 27, 18:11
Aidan on A matter of class: ““But no CC, FF is bonkers, and just continues on with his relentless efforts (with obvious support from unionists like…” Dec 27, 18:05
Dan on A matter of class: “Aye Alf, it’s so obvious what is going on. These arseholes will pick up on and try to make hay…” Dec 27, 17:53
Northcode on A matter of class: ““Britain doesn’t need to become great again – it already is” What utter nonsense from Piotr Wilczek… whoever he is.…” Dec 27, 17:50
Northcode on A matter of class: ““It always triggers the moonhowlers when I point out that the most influential voice in Scottish political blogging thinks their…” Dec 27, 17:49
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@ Alf 5.16pm Au contraire (that’s French that is…) Alf, I feel sure enough of my identity not to have…” Dec 27, 17:46
Alf Baird on A matter of class: “As demonstrated in the btl attacks here, the assimilated natives “place themselves in a considerably superior position to the average…” Dec 27, 17:16
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@ Dan 4.20pm For the benefit of the minimally self aware or those who read with their lips moving like…” Dec 27, 16:47
Captain Caveman on A matter of class: “Nah. I don’t care what yours or anyone else’s views are – some things just aren’t done, and that’s one…” Dec 27, 16:43
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@ Northcode 4.14pm In the unlikely event of the English deciding they wanted to dissolve the union I doubt they’d…” Dec 27, 16:34
Dan on A matter of class: “Ach, awa an dinae talk pish, ya pair o tag team fannies. My point was that folk, whether related* or…” Dec 27, 16:20
Northcode on A matter of class: ““…ethno-nationalist bigots don’t get to set the referendum franchise and decide on who is and isn’t pure enough to qualify…” Dec 27, 16:14
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “James, rather than clog up BTL discourse here with your cack-tsunami of ill thought out ramblings, wouldn’t you better advised…” Dec 27, 15:24
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@Capt. Caveman 2.49pm Blood and soil bigot types just can’t help themselves bud. He’s not the first and doubtless won’t…” Dec 27, 15:10
Captain Caveman on A matter of class: “@Dan Bringing someone’s kid into it is lower than a snake’s belly. I mean, I know you’re a miserable, bitter…” Dec 27, 14:49
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@Alf 6.45 pm Like gender ideology, so-called ‘civic nationalism’ ideology is also “Delusional nonsense” of the ‘snake oil’ variety, and…” Dec 27, 14:47
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “If you were educated you would know there is no Scottish government or parliament in Scotland, because there would be…” Dec 27, 14:24
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “@ Dan 11.13am In the unlikely event you’ve ever been able to convince a woman to let you near enough…” Dec 27, 14:22
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “TURABDIN, Indeed a matter optics, He speaks of England as it it were all of Britain, but that Britain has…” Dec 27, 14:07
Andy Ellis on A matter of class: “The thing is Turabdin, it’s not that he’s wrong exactly it’s just that the progress his own country country has…” Dec 27, 13:55
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “The parliament of Great Britain lasted between the years from / for Scotland and England 1707 – 1800. That is…” Dec 27, 13:43
TURABDIN on A matter of class: “A MATTER OF OPTICS, a Spectator message from the former Polish ambassador «to London», https://archive.ph/bG0Qa Should have gone to spec…” Dec 27, 13:26
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “The irony that both the sets of politician in Scotland and England disclaim king James as nothing but a pretend…” Dec 27, 13:25
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “Colin Alexander, If you go into the Irish parliaments old records you will find the Anglo- Irish treaty 1800. That…” Dec 27, 13:00
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “Colin Alexander. The UK constitution is that of the parliament of England and Ireland, not Scotland. 1: because there is…” Dec 27, 12:26
James Cheyne on A matter of class: “Nice neat Dicey theory, Except the Monarch of England was the Monarch of England passed by the laws of parliament…” Dec 27, 12:04
factchecker on A matter of class: “James says the UK Parliament says ”We did not ask the Scots to join, because in all probability they would…” Dec 27, 11:56
