Wings Over Scotland

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?

It was very tempting just to pull a neat soundbite out of Tory minister Michael Gove’s comments on Scotland to Evan Davis on Newsnight last night (from around 15m), but we think the whole five-minute segment bears watching.

You’ve probably already picked up the gist of it (the Tories would prefer Labour to win in Scotland rather than the SNP) on social media, but as Gove calmly and rationally lays out the view, the last remaining tattered shreds of Labour’s “vote SNP get Tories” line disintegrate before our eyes.

Readers will of course be highly sceptical of ever taking a a Conservative minister’s word at face value, but that’s why we’ve put the whole thing up rather than just a snappy ten-second clip. We invite anyone to find fault with the logic of his position.

Anyone reading the weekend’s newspapers could have been forgiven for thinking that Westminster had been replaced with a bouncy castle, and our political class with hysterical children. As the long-anticipated rise of the SNP looms closer into sight, the Conservative press seems to have wet itself in fear.

The Daily Mail front page on Saturday shrieked that Nicola Sturgeon is “The most dangerous woman in Britain”. The Times’ front page story declared that Labour is panicking and likely to run to the left after Sturgeon’s debate victory. The Telegraph gave up on any remaining pretence of journalistic standards and ran a story about a conversation between Nicola Sturgeon and the French Ambassador without asking either of them for a quote on it (both deny it).

It’s worth considering for a moment why this is. Conventional wisdom in the Labour Party, after all, is that a strong SNP is good for the Tories. Why, then, would the Tory press be so quick to attack them? Particularly in a way, as with the Telegraph, which might actually have damaged them, had the punch landed?

The answer is that Britain’s papers are in the process of re-writing our constitution to keep Labour out – and Jim Murphy is helping them.

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This is quite something. It took 15 hours into “MemoGate” before anyone got a Scottish Government representative on air – even though they’d found time to get quotes from Willie Rennie, who isn’t the leader of a Westminster party and whose party isn’t even involved in the story. When they did, here’s what happened.

Readers can form their own opinions about the interview. But at the very end of the piece the BBC’s James Cook says “this memo does exist”. It may do, but we’re not sure what his current grounds for that statement are.

To the best of our knowledge nobody is claiming to have seen it personally except the Telegraph. The Foreign Office have denied all knowledge of any memo, the Scotland Office apparently refuses to comment, and we have no idea who allegedly wrote it.

Cook has already made, then rowed back on, some rather questionable statements in the last 24 hours. Viewers may feel it might be better if he just stuck to the facts.

We’re going to let this speak for itself.

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Sheesh. We pop out for a couple of hours to feed the Wings Emergency Kitten and we get back to find that it’s the UK press that’s barfed up hairballs all over its front pages.

And the contradictory cross-vortex coverlines aren’t even the mad bit.

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In over 20 years of living in Bath, spanning five general elections, we’ve never seen a political billboard in town before. There’s been no point. In vote-share terms the city is the 4th-safest Lib Dem seat in the UK (and the 2nd-safest in England), and it has been since the party won it from the Conservatives in 1992.

But we’ve got a billboard now, featuring two men whose parties haven’t got an earthly hope of winning here (one of them because it’s not standing). What’s that all about?

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Nicola Sturgeon is brilliant. Can we just outsource all our politics to Scotland and make Parliament into a Weatherspoon’s? #leadersdebate

— Brian Millar (@arthurascii) April 2, 2015

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From today’s Daily Politics (42m 25s in):

We’ll add this one to the list.

This is an extract from this morning’s Today programme on Radio 4 (starts about 2h 5m in), in which James Naughtie expresses an unusually frank and forthright opinion on Jim Murphy’s claim about the biggest party forming the government.

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We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

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