Hang on a minute. We just got yet another begging email from Labour.
Those vacancies sound familiar. The amount, not so much. £87,500?
The egos of the SNP’s tiny band of six Westminster MPs must be swelling by the day. For weeks we’ve been recording Labour’s standard, decades-old mantra of how Scots mustn’t vote SNP or the Tories will get in. In today’s Herald, meanwhile, no less a figure than the Prime Minister warns that if we vote SNP, Labour will get in.
And the Lib Dems? The Lib Dems have completely lost their minds.
BBC News, 12 September 2014:
The Guardian, 17 December 2014:
And with a mighty rush, rebellious Scots to crush, eh readers?
When Jim Murphy spoke on last night’s Scotland Tonight, he’d been the “leader” of Scottish Labour for approximately 60 hours. Here’s how he’s going to play it.
Let’s quickly examine those statements, shall we?
The Times, 14 December 2014:
“Scottish Labour has an ‘intellectual deficit’ because it is filled with ‘time-servers’ given seats to keep them quiet, according to Paul Sinclair, who served alongside Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour leader, and at the heart of the ‘no’ campaign against Scottish independence.
As someone who wrote Johann Lamont’s speeches for the last three years, on this occasion we’re going to defer to Mr Sinclair’s superior expertise.
We suppose we should offer a few thoughts on this, then.
And we don’t mean Kezia Dugdale’s freakishly gigantic hands.
In an alternative universe, Keir Hardie reacts to news of the election of Jim Murphy.
One of our ever-alert agents uncovered this for us today. Published quietly last week by the House Of Commons Library and completely unremarked-upon by the Scottish media, it’s a document whose introductory text makes the relevant point concisely and eloquently without any need for elaboration or explanation on our part.
The emphasis is ours. England gets what England’s MPs vote for more than 99% of the time. Scotland gets what Scotland’s MPs vote for less than a quarter of the time. We’ll leave it at that.
Labour have already been widely derided for their feeble plan to increase the minimum wage to £8 by 2020 – a level likely to barely keep pace with inflation. But it turns out they’ve got a goal even more pathetic for people trying to survive on meagre incomes.
Today’s media is dominated by reports on the release by the US government of a deeply horrifying dossier admitting and detailing the massive scale of torture carried out by the CIA on often-innocent detainees during the USA’s “war on terror”.
You can’t chuck a brick at the internet without hitting a hundred links on the subject, so we’re not going to pick any out in particular, but many reflect on the UK’s willing complicity in many of the abuses, with the Labour government of Tony Blair having allowed Prestwick Airport to be used as a stop-off for torture flights.
There’s also a rather telling article in the Scotsman.
This is Tory activist Sarah Robb. She’s not a very nice person. (We don’t feel too bad about saying that, as she’s no fan of ours either.)
But, y’know, Tory activist, not a nice person – no news there, right?
With polls almost all predicting a hung parliament at next year’s UK general election, every seat counts. So the beleaguered Labour Party must have had hopes of securing a constituency like Gordon in Aberdeenshire.
The Lib Dem incumbent Malcolm Bruce is stepping down, almost certainly taking his substantial personal vote with him, and the party’s choice of replacement, ex-BBC journalist Christine Jardine, managed to pull in just 1,940 votes in neighbouring Aberdeen Donside when she stood there for the Scottish Parliament last year.
In 2010 Labour came third in the seat, but just 1,016 votes behind the SNP, and with Scots traditionally inclined to back Labour at Westminster elections Gordon would surely have had to be down as a winnable target for Ed Miliband.
So the Labour candidate selected to contest the seat – before Alex Salmond had declared an intent to stand, making the Nats hot favourites – is quite an eye-opener.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
