Wings Over Scotland

It’s come awfully late, but we’ve finally got an answer to a question people have been asking Jim Murphy since last December.

In an interview with the BBC’s Gary Robertson this morning, the Scottish Labour regional manager told listeners that should he win the East Renfrewshire seat in next month’s election, he’d stay in the job for the full five-year term, but would also stand for election as a Holyrood MSP in 2016.

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 29 April 2015)
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And that raises more questions than it answers.

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Greg Moodie’s Election Dissection, a compilation of splendid cartoon strips from The National, Bella Caledonia and elsewhere, is available to order now.

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.

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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.

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Firstly, we’re not sure this qualifies as “BREAKING” news:

But it’s not the Daily Record’s cub reporter that we’re talking about.

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Waking up bleary-eyed this morning at 6.45am, we reached over to switch on Good Morning Scotland, just in time for the news headlines round-up. This is what we heard:

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 28 April 2015)
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We honestly thought in our semi-awake state we might have dreamed it.

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The Daily Mail evidently decided the first headline wasn’t mad enough.

First and second versions here.

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Right. We’ve got some slightly bad news, readers, and we might as well bite the bullet and tell you now. It’s touch and go whether Project Red is going to arrive before the election. (The good news is that going by the polls it isn’t going to matter.) Our vast team of coders is still working on it around the clock, but it’s looking like a tall order.

So we better tell you why.

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If you’re trying to give someone an example of a terrible group of people from history, I think the Nazis are pretty good for that purpose. They fulfil the criterion excellently, what with all the invading and occupying and repression and genocidal murder and everything, and there’s very little ambiguity or any shades of grey about their evil.

Now, alert readers may have spotted that while the headline of this article is a genuine quote from the paragraph above, and could be technically correctly described as my words by someone with malicious and dishonest intent (something which does in fact happen regularly), it gives a highly misleading impression of what was really said.

And with that, welcome to the Scottish media.

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Normally you have to wait until after an election for this stuff.

But Scottish Labour’s promises are collapsing one by one with 10 days still to go.

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There’s a fascinating detail in the latest Panelbase/Sunday Times survey of Scottish public opinion, which shows a further 2.5% swing to the SNP compared to the same company’s last poll earlier this month.

Those are some remarkable figures, but they tell a much wider story.

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Scotland on Sunday, 21 March this year:

“Ed Miliband will go on the offensive against the SNP on a visit to Scotland tomorrow as Labour prepares to unveil a dossier of evidence to show that Nationalist MPs supported the Tories 70 per cent of the time during the last two Labour governments.

Discussions are also underway to commemorate the 28 March anniversary of 11 SNP MPs joining the Tories to help vote down Jim Callaghan’s government in 1979.

The historic vote led to the election which brought in Margaret Thatcher and heralded 17 years of Conservative rule. Proposals to mark the day include wearing a black arm band and laying a wreath at the miners’ memorial.”

And here’s the Guardian today.

“Lord Heseltine, the former Tory deputy prime minister who championed the regeneration of Britain’s inner cities in the 1980s, is being lined up by the shadow business secretary to advise Labour in government.

In a sign of how some Labour figures will try to revive the ‘big tent’ approach of Tony Blair, Chuka Umunna described Heseltine as a visionary who could advise him on plans for the further devolution of power to the English cities and regions.

‘There is no denying it, a lot of people in the Labour movement are quite inspired by what he’s done in rejuvenating cities and regions,’ he told the Guardian. ‘Just because he is a Tory should not stand in the way of us working with him in the future and I very much hope to do that.'”

We’re sure those miners Scottish Labour laid a wreath for a month ago will be chuffed.

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