Archive for the ‘scottish politics’
Just two things 167
A masterpiece of timing 107
Here’s Kezia Dugdale in the Scotsman:
Now, to be honest we’re not sure we remember exactly when that was. Was it when Scottish Labour were threatening to slash “something for nothing” public services? Was it when Rachel Reeves said “we are not the party of people on benefits” (which is almost half the country)? Was it when Tom Harris said “we weren’t set up as some sort of charity to help the poorest in society”?
All we do know is, if we were a prospective Labour leader and we were going to make comments like that at all, we probably wouldn’t choose to do it just hours before a Tory chancellor was going to produce a budget battering living hell out of the most vulnerable in society and throwing 500,000 children in Scotland alone into poverty.
Because, y’know, we might be idiots, but we’re not complete idiots.
What don’t we know? 91
We noticed this last night, and we checked this morning and it’s still there:
That’s going to come as news to the people going to court tomorrow.
Making lemonade 93
I started lurking on PoliticalBetting.com in the run up to the referendum and enjoyed reading the “robust” debates. A couple of months after the vote I got more actively involved and was immediately puzzled as to why many PBers, commentators, party strategists and – particularly – supposedly infallible bookmakers were all struggling to accept the accuracy of the Scottish opinion polls.
At this point the polls were already indicating that Scottish Labour was going to lose many of its 41 seats and could end up with fewer than five. I started commenting that from where I sitting in Stirling the opinion polls were accurate, the SNP surge was real and indeed that it had not yet peaked.
To lie with impunity 112
We reported last night on the mealy-mouthed semi-correction the Daily Telegraph has finally been forced to grudgingly publish with regards to its incompetent and inaccurate creation of the “Memogate” scandal. The paper – we’re loath to prefix it with the word “news” – has now suffered the full weight, such as it is, of the press regulator IPSO, and will not have to answer any further for its actions.
And that just leaves us with the source.
The wages of triangulation 206
In our latest Panelbase opinion poll, conducted last week in association with the Sunday Times, we wanted to complete the work we started previously in analysing the public’s reaction to Labour’s election strategies.
What we found last time was that almost every decision the party had taken in Scotland under the regional managership of Jim Murphy had been massively at odds with the Scottish electorate.
Whether it was booze at football, full fiscal autonomy or the Named Person initiative for child welfare, the voters were full-square behind the SNP, and every new policy Scottish Labour unveiled doomed them further. Anything that could be got wrong was.
This time we were curious about the effects in the whole UK, and with regard to one landmark moment in particular.
The third voice 231
We’re not due a traffic post this month, so we’ll just leave this here.
(From a new Panelbase poll. More findings coming soon.)
Stop or we’ll say stop again 224
We’ll never tire of documenting the Daily Record’s increasingly panicked attempts to get David Cameron to enact the Record’s dodgy promise of last September and save it from having to answer for the pup it sold Scotland.
The member for The Vow 211
The Sunday Post’s lobby reporter James Millar noticed today that all the parties have submitted their nominations to sit on the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster.
As has already been noted, the majority of the committee – seven from 11 – are MPs for English seats (list below). But one name in particular caught our attention.

























