By now you should all have had a chance to marvel at the extraordinary madness that is Scottish Labour’s 51-page suicide note of SNP members who’ve said rude words on the internet since 2012.
You may even have had time to read a data protection expert (and Labour voter)’s assessment of all the ways in which the dossier breaks the law.
Thank you for your e-mail to Kezia with regards to her exchange with the First Minister in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 23rd April 2015.
Kezia can confirm that the person mentioned in the exchange has had their membership of the Labour Party put under administrative suspension and an investigation is currently being conducted by the General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party.
If you have specific questions on the investigation you will need to direct them to the Scottish Labour Party, not Kezia’s Parliamentary office.
If there is anything other issues Kezia can help with as your MSP, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
An alert reader today drew our attention to a detail we’d missed in a recent article in the Shetland News. It concerned Alistair Carmichael’s leaking of a false memo in order to smear Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP while the Orkney & Shetland MP was still Secretary of State for Scotland, and took the form of a quote from Carmichael’s Holyrood counterpart Tavish Scott, MSP for Shetland:
We know that politicians are allowed to lie in election literature, but we’re struggling to see how this isn’t fraud, which is something different altogether.
Today’s Scottish Sun has a full breakdown of all 59 Scottish seats at Westminster, including bookies’ odds for the favourite in each one. It suggests that nine Labour MPs will have jobs in Scotland a week from today, along with two Tories and a single lonely Lib Dem, with the SNP sweeping the other 47.
We ran the incumbents in those 12 seats through MP Report Card, an independent site which tracks the activity of all the UK’s MPs including expenses claims, outside earnings, how often they turn up to vote or speak in debates and how good they are at replying to constituents’ letters, to gauge their calibre.
Scottish Labour branch office manager Jim Murphy will be appearing on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Call Kaye” programme from 9am today, taking questions from voters as well as presenter Kaye Adams. The phone number to ring in is 0500 92 95 00.
Below are a few posers readers might like to put to Mr Murphy, because he seems to have been adept at avoiding them throughout the campaign. Feel free to reword them.
There’s a tactical voting tool on the Telegraph website, which despite a somewhat loaded headline purports to even-handedly advise confused voters on the best course of action to take in their own constituency depending on whether they want to keep Ed Miliband or David Cameron OUT of 10 Downing Street.
We were a bit suspicious when we typed our Bath postcode in and asked to keep Cameron out, because it advised us to vote Labour even though it’s one of the safest Lib Dem seats in the country (with the Tories in 2nd) and Labour got just 3,251 votes in 2010, which is to say they’ve got absolutely no hope here.
And then we tried some Scottish seats, and things got a bit creepy.
A few days ago, a constituency poll by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft found that the SNP were leading narrowly in Edinburgh South – a seat in which they secured a paltry 7.7% of the vote in the 2010 general election. Keep that fact in mind, readers.
Today the Edinburgh Evening News (EEN) published an article by David Maddox, a senior political journalist on the Scotsman, alleging that the SNP candidate for the seat, Neil Hay, had “liken[ed] anti-independence campaigners to Nazi collaborators” in a tweet over two and a half years ago (from a pseudonymous account under the name “Paco McSheepie”), and had also tweeted a series of attacks on pensioners.
Scottish Labour immediately leapt on the article and demanded Mr Hay be sacked as the candidate, less than two weeks before the election. It’s not possible to replace a candidate at such a late stage – some voters may already have voted by post – and such a move would thereby effectively have handed the seat to the Labour candidate and previous MP Ian Murray by default.
The story turned out to be an absurd, massive exaggeration and misrepresentation of the reality. But it also exposed a level of naked, shameless dishonesty and hypocrisy in Scottish Labour, and in particular its deputy leader Kezia Dugdale, that even this site hadn’t previously dared to imagine.
Earlier today we highlighted some of the social-media charm of Labour blogger and BBC pundit Ian Smart, after the Scottish branch office deputy leader Kezia Dugdale demanded that the First Minister should take a more pro-active role in policing the comments of party members on Twitter and Facebook.
Mr Smart’s history of incredibly abusive and offensive comments stretches back many years. But of course, it wouldn’t be reasonable to berate Scottish Labour for its failure to act if it wasn’t aware of them. So we had a trawl through his Twitter followers list just to see if there was anyone who might have noticed and brought it to the leadership’s attention so they could have a quiet word.
After literally months of telling voters endlessly that the only way to stop the Tories forming the next government was for Labour to be the biggest party, Jim Murphy was finally pressed properly last night on the question by the First Minister on STV (from around 1h 40m). Here’s what happened:
That seems to be a pretty clear and unequivocal statement – Labour will vote against any Queen’s Speech from the Tories. We already know that the SNP have pledged categorically that they’d do the same.
What that means is that if the SNP and Labour between them – in ANY combination – have more than 323 MPs, the speech will be defeated and the Tories can’t form the government, whether they’re the biggest single party or not.
At that point, Ed Miliband will be invited to attempt to form one, which the SNP will vote for, and which on the numbers above will mean that Miliband becomes the next Prime Minister. Labour, though not the largest party, will form the government.
That’s from Jim Murphy’s own mouth. The lie is dead. Anyone still got any questions?
Like some sort of out-of-control, unstoppable lying machine, Scottish Labour keep telling the electorate that the party with the most seats in a hung parliament is the one that forms the government, and that the only way to prevent the Conservatives from returning to power is for Labour to be the biggest party.
(Because if the answer is yes then Labour’s entire Scottish election strategy – “Vote SNP get Tories!” – crumbles to dust, and if it’s no then Labour is saying that it’d be prepared to abandon not just Scotland but the whole UK to another five years of Conservative government purely out of spite against the SNP.)
Three of the party’s elected representatives have now been asked the question on air – James Kelly MSP by John Mackay of Scotland Tonight a week ago, branch office leader Jim Murphy by BBC Scotland’s Gary Robertson yesterday, and the shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran last night (below), again by STV’s John Mackay.
As you can see, Scotland’s voters still await an answer. But on this page we’ll keep track of all the swerves, evasions and dodges until we get one, if we ever do.
Hatey McHateface on A Long Hard Think: “I absolutely and categorically believe with every fiber of my being that “ten, twenty or more” isn’t “thousands”. Just as…” Sep 12, 09:51
Spartan 117 on A Long Hard Think: “Good post. Your second paragraph accurately sums up the current state of the whole of the UK. We are ruled…” Sep 12, 09:39
Spartan 117 on A Long Hard Think: “It’s not hard to imagine Chas as that’s exactly what we have at present.” Sep 12, 09:30
DaveL on A Long Hard Think: “The reasoning is quite simple and easy to see. People the police like are left alone to do as they…” Sep 12, 09:25
DaveL on A Long Hard Think: “Do you think that when ten, twenty or more people lifted at a time on ‘terrorism’ charges get to wait…” Sep 12, 09:13
Hatey McHateface on A Long Hard Think: “If you don’t want anybody to be investigated and possibly penalised for the missing money and goods, twathater, just say…” Sep 12, 08:36
twathater on A Long Hard Think: “AND let us also not FORGET Robert Corruption. This sorry excuse for a country, governed by the corrupt for the…” Sep 12, 03:12
twathater on A Long Hard Think: ““That is the UK Gov taking action because the Scottish Gov will not!” Correct. By far the most significant development…” Sep 12, 03:05
Willie on A Long Hard Think: “And meanwhile how many people know that the ‘ Kangaroo court ” they call the Standards Commission Scotland has changed…” Sep 12, 01:05
Andrew Morton on A Long Hard Think: “Obvious, innit? The items in her possession are presumably the ones removed from the charge sheet. As they aren’t the…” Sep 12, 00:28
Lorncal on A Long Hard Think: “Must admit that this is something that I did think about initially, but, now, I don’t care. All I want…” Sep 11, 23:14
Hatey McHateface on A Long Hard Think: ““That is the UK Gov taking action because the Scottish Gov will not!” Correct. By far the most significant development…” Sep 11, 21:45
Hatey McHateface on A Long Hard Think: “Michty Fearghas! You’re remarkably hale, hearty and spry for somebody who’s been riddled with bullets. But to be serious for…” Sep 11, 21:34
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on A Long Hard Think: “« Did we dodge a bullet or did we dodge a bullet in 2014. » No, we invited the hail…” Sep 11, 20:57
Chas on A Long Hard Think: “It did not take too long before the crank professor mounted his hobby horse! I said some years ago that,…” Sep 11, 20:24
Alf Baird on A Long Hard Think: ““We’ll be honest with you, readers, we’re at something of a loss for words at this point.” In the Manichaean…” Sep 11, 19:48
Hatey McHateface on A Long Hard Think: “As things stand, willie, there appears to be £700,000 unaccounted for. In addition, there appears to be items bought with…” Sep 11, 19:14
Frank Gillougley on A Long Hard Think: “Reasoning and law are redundant when used against straightforward brazen and ‘unanswerable to anyone’ corruption. Even this is a waste…” Sep 11, 18:41
Hatey McHateface on A Long Hard Think: ““They are busy locking up thousands of pensioners with cardboard signs” Naw. They’re not. You’re busy either lying or fantasising.” Sep 11, 18:38
willie on A Long Hard Think: “Quite honestly can anyone have any faith in the police. As this response shows Police Scotland are absolutely rotten to…” Sep 11, 18:34
PhilM on A Long Hard Think: “The information may not be held by Police Scotland but is it the kind of information that ought to be…” Sep 11, 18:20
Morgatron on A Long Hard Think: “Just bamboozled! Who says crime doesn’t pay. Obviously not her.” Sep 11, 18:19
robertkknight on A Long Hard Think: “Unlike Rev Stu, I am not at a loss for words, namely… Corruption. This sorry excuse for a country, governed…” Sep 11, 17:56
Mark Beggan on A Long Hard Think: “For many years many people, myself included, have accused Sturgeon and the SNP of being a Cult who’s agenda is…” Sep 11, 17:55
Spartan 117 on A Long Hard Think: “Anyone surprised? Nope, me neither. This state is rotten.” Sep 11, 17:49
ALANM on A Long Hard Think: ““We broke the law so we’d like to apologise for the inconvenience caused.” All crooks wanting to obtain a get…” Sep 11, 17:44
Ronnie on A Long Hard Think: “Don’t know about the rest of you, but I cannot even look at her anymore.” Sep 11, 17:29
Andy Wiltshire on A Long Hard Think: “Is the image at the top the entirety of what they sent you, Rev? If so it looks like it’s…” Sep 11, 17:25
Mark Beggan on A Long Hard Think: “From the perspective of a Right wing fascist who knows the whole barrel is rotten one can only quote a…” Sep 11, 17:21
