Wings Over Scotland

Much as we like to mock Scottish Labour for their deep-seated terror of stating a firm policy position on any subject whatsoever (other than “SNP BAD”, of course), we have to give credit where it’s due. Last weekend, Johann Lamont finally comprehensively addressed a subject she’s been ducking since before this website even existed.

Under the inquisitorial gaze of the BBC’s remorseless Brian Taylor, Lamont bit the bullet and laid out her position once and for all, in simple plain-speaking terms, on Britain’s nuclear deterrent. The BBC website is a little bit flaky with video, so we’ve transcribed the six-minute exchange for you below. Let that be an end to the matter.

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Here’s some more from Johann Lamont’s recent BBC interview (18m 20s).

BRIAN TAYLOR: Will a Labour government repeal the bedroom tax?

JOHANN LAMONT: Well, what we’ve been very clear about is that this is, em, deeply damaging to very many families. I’ve had examples of young people with learning disabilities living in supported accommodation who are now paying more. That is simply unacceptable.

As answers go we suppose it’s not exactly “Yes” or “No”, but it definitely sounds like we’ve got a firm and specific commitment coming up any second now, readers!

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Johann Lamont, interviewed on the BBC last weekend:

“You can understand the desirability of people having access to medicines, but everybody knows there are tough choices being made now.” (10m 19s)

That’s the “leader of the Labour Party in Scotland”, there, seemingly equivocal on the principle of “people having access to medicines”. Nye Bevin must be proud.

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This site often reflects on the absence of real political choice available to the UK electorate, but it has rarely been more clearly illustrated than it was on this morning’s BBC breakfast news in an interview with Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

Interviewed by presenter Charlie Stayt, Balls first clarified Labour’s position on the top-rate tax cut taking effect this week. Refusing to commit Labour to restoring the 50p rate if elected in 2015, Balls nevertheless made the meaningless pledge that if an election were to be held tomorrow it would be in Labour’s manifesto.

(An interesting distinction from “We would actually do it”, of course.)

We’re a bit puzzled by this. Either a 50p tax rate brings in more money or it doesn’t (and it does – even George Osborne’s own budget statement noted that it raised an extra £1bn for the Treasury compared to the 40p rate that preceded it), so what does it matter what the country’s general economic condition is? Shouldn’t Labour be committed as a matter of principle to wealth redistribution by taxing the rich?

Instead, Balls said that reducing the rate to 45p was “not my priority” (rather than, say, “I think it’s wrong”), suggesting that it was nevertheless something he’d want to do. But it was on welfare reform that he was most revealing.

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We’re not sure we can untangle this.

Perhaps you can help us out.

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Veteran readers of this site will know how hard it is to nail Scottish Labour down on a policy for just about anything. So when we suggested earlier today that the party DID have a (sort of) firm policy on something – namely calling on the Scottish Government to bring forward legislation to stop people being evicted over bedroom-tax arrears – we probably shouldn’t have been surprised to be contacted within minutes by a Scottish Labour press officer angrily insisting that it didn’t.

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Look, you knew we’d have to do this. Today’s ruling of the commission investigating SFA/SPL rule breaches by Rangers is almost the closing act in the farcical saga that’s enveloped Scottish football for just over a year since the club went into administration on Valentine’s Day 2012, so we’re nearly finished now.

Nevertheless, Lord Nimmo-Smith’s judgement is so extraordinary and bizarre it simply can’t pass without comment. We gave a gut reaction to it this morning, but it’s in the detail that you really see the contortions into which the Commission was obliged to twist itself in order to let the club off scot-free.

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This is the text of yesterday’s radio interview between BBC Scotland’s Glenn Campbell and Lord Malloch-Brown, the former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations who also served as a Foreign Office minister in the last UK Labour government. It seems reasonable to suggest that (a) he’s not a rabid SNP stooge, and (b) he’s a pretty good authority on how Europe works.

The interview starts with the response to a question we don’t get to hear, and we’ve excised a few “um”s, “you know”s and “I mean”s for readability. All emphasis is ours. The transcript is otherwise verbatim.

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Fans of TV panel shows will probably be aware of a regular strand on the BBC’s Mock The Week called “Between The Lines”, in which one comedian delivers lines from a speech in the persona of a public figure, while the other translates what they really mean. There’s a chucklesome example here.

For a bit of fun we’ve decided to have our own attempt, with a letter sent out this week to the No campaign’s mailing list by the independence debate’s own Hugh Dennis: “Better Together” campaign director and creative truth interpreter Blair McDougall.

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Ten days ago, Scottish Labour “deputy” leader Anas Sarwar issued a press release in his capacity as head of Labour’s referendum campaign, noting that “[Nicola Sturgeon] is right to say there has been a lot of negative campaigning. We will be raising the level of debate and ensuring that Scotland gets the level of debate it deserves.”

Here are some extracts from Sarwar and his independence-fearing colleagues’ contributions to yesterday’s epic House of Commons “debate” (in which one side got a little over 10 times as long to put its case as the other) on the motion giving the Scottish Parliament the power to conduct the independence referendum.

Make your own judgement as to how they did, and the level of debate they apparently consider Scotland deserves.

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Writing a site like this is in one sense an exercise in idealistic cognitive dissonance. No matter how often the opposite turns out to be the case, you always sort of hope, deep down, that if you highlight someone’s occasional failings in a calm and factual manner they’ll say “Oh well, that’s a fair cop”, and even if they don’t change their ways they’ll at least acknowledge the validity of legitimate, honest criticism.

But as we say, it rarely turns out that way. Last night we picked up on what was at heart a fairly minor semantic quibble with high-profile Scottish-politics commentator David Torrance, arising from the evening’s edition of Scotland Tonight. He got in touch with us on Twitter almost immediately to object in rather strong terms to our views, and an exchange went on until around 2am when everyone seemingly went to bed.

We thought no more of it, although we hoped this morning that there might be some answers to some questions that Mr Torrance had explicitly invited during the debate. Instead, to our surprise (we know, still) and dismay, not only were none to be found, but the entire discussion – at his end, anyway – had completely vanished.

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