Wings Over Scotland

Of tonight’s debate.

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Sorry about this, readers. We know that YOU already know that the biggest party in a hung parliament has no special privileges when it comes to forming the government, but since those truth-dodging scamps Scottish Labour still won’t stop saying it (see below), we do still need to keep collating the evidence proving it’s a lie.

The bald-eagle-looking chap toting the cerise tie in this clip of this morning’s Victoria Derbyshire show on the BBC News channel is Lord (Andrew) Adonis, a former Labour government minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He also wrote the book “Five Days In May” about the latter’s unsuccessful attempt to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, despite having won almost 50 fewer seats than the Conservatives in that election. So he understands the process.

Lord Adonis does, in fairness, make a brief and half-hearted attempt at punting Jim Murphy’s “1924” line, but in the end he’s forced to concede (nudged along by Peter Riddell of the Institute for Government) that in fact the second-placed party forming the government is perfectly possible.

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The BBC’s Robert Peston on yesterday’s Today programme. (About 2h 37m in.)

(Today, BBC Radio 4, 14 April 2015)
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Thank heavens that nice Mr Miliband’s going to stand up for austerity, eh?

The Daily Record gets up high on its outrage horse this morning with a front-page story titled “Double-crossed on devo”, echoing Jim Murphy’s claim of yesterday that the Tories’ manifesto pledge on “English votes for English laws” is a “betrayal” of the “Vow” signed by the three UK party leaders before the independence referendum.

Unsurprisingly, the Record gives rather less prominence to the news that the Vow isn’t worth the fake parchment it wasn’t written on than it did to repeatedly hyping it up and then proclaiming that it had already been delivered.

But there’s a twist.

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Don’t you just hate ’em?

Last week we listened to a Radio Scotland phone-in debate on Trident, hosted very deftly by John Beattie, who managed to steer callers away from political points and keep the discussion on the merits or otherwise of the weapons system itself.

Sadly that didn’t dissuade the usual coterie of nutters/local councillors phoning in insisting that (a) North Korea would invade/blast Scotland off the face of the Earth the moment we let our guard down, and (b) Helensburgh would immediately revert to the Stone Age at the loss of jobs were the few hundred Trident sailors who spend about a week every year in the town to be reassigned to other posts in the navy.

We didn’t have time to ring in ourselves, but we did manage to think of a much better idea that solved both of those problems without lumbering Scotland with a gigantic nuclear white elephant, and one that would also free up an awful lot of valuable police time and resources that are currently spent arresting a bunch of hippies.

See if you can pick any holes in it, readers.

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We’ve been quiet today because we’ve been wading through the 80-odd painfully-dry pages of the Labour 2015 election manifesto, folks. It’s a deeply tedious read – screeds and screeds of waffly text about how nice things are nice and good things are good but bad things are bad. A couple of things did jump out, though. Here’s one.

Alert readers will of course recall that the party’s solemn pledge in Scotland is to provide 1000 more nurses (hastily revised from the comical “1000 more than whatever the SNP say”) from the proceeds of the Mansion Tax, even though NHS Scotland is devolved and no Westminster government can in fact hire a single Scottish nurse.

But hang on. Something’s not right about those numbers.

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You’d have to say this seems pretty clear.

(From today’s Daily Politics, around 28m in.)

With the “biggest party forms the government” lie now sunk and rusting slowly on the seabed (weighed down even further by polls suggesting that Labour actually will be the largest party even if they lose all of Scotland to the SNP), and four weeks of campaigning left to fill, Scottish Labour have had to grab a hammer, smash the glass on the “EMERGENCY – IN CASE OF DESPERATION” box and clutch desperately at whatever they found inside.

The abject answer is “Project Fear 2 – This Time It’s Full Fiscal Autonomy”.

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The deeply ideologically-principled Liberal Democrats, readers:

Can anyone help us collect the full set?

It’s worth reminding yourself before you watch this clip from BBC News this morning that the gentleman at the lectern isn’t some rabid Daily Mail columnist, but is in fact the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon.

The “SPACE MONSTERS!” rationale for foreign policy. Who saw that one coming?

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?