Wings Over Scotland

To his credit, Ed Miliband seems to have noticed that his party is crumbling beneath his feet. The rot is spreading down from Scotland, and Labour’s vote in Rochester & Strood – a seat it held, with slightly different boundaries, as recently as 2010 – has plummeted to just 16% despite voters in the constituency naming the NHS (usually Labour’s strongest field) as their top priority.

And when modern-day Labour panics, it reaches for a little hammer and smashes the glass on a box marked “IN CASE OF ABSOLUTE EMERGENCY TRY SOCIALISM”, in which it keeps a very old, moth-eaten piece of paper titled “House of Lords reform”.

So today Miliband suddenly pulled what seems to be a brand-new box-fresh policy out of – well, let’s be polite and say “the ether”.

The Lords is to be abolished, we’re told, and replaced with a new elected “Senate”, which will conveniently also serve as some  form of regional devolution, though its specific responsibilities and powers have – readers will doubtless be quite astonished to hear – not been laid out.

Mr Miliband’s only problem will be getting anyone to believe it.

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If not a surprising one.

Scottish Labour now has a leadership contest, with the (relatively) left-wing MSP Neil Findlay throwing his hat into the ring with that of colleague Sarah Boyack (assuming both can secure the necessary 10 nominations from M/S/EPs).

We thought we’d help him tidy up his press statement on the matter, as he appears to have accidentally left a few words out.

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This is how it begins. This morning’s media reports a call from First Minister-elect Nicola Sturgeon that any future referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU should be subject to a veto from all four constituent nations – that is, if the UK as a whole votes to leave but either England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales vote to stay in, the result is null and void.

It’s an extremely clever move. While none of the main three Westminster parties actually WANT to leave the EU and would love to go along with such a plan, public opinion in England will not allow any of them to back it. There would be a massive outcry, and quite legitimately so – Scotland, people would reasonably say, just voted that it wanted to remain part of the UK, and therefore must accept UK decisions.

And with that, the die is cast and the door opens.

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It seems the Daily Record has taken something of a sulk at our post of earlier today. This evening the paper’s editor Murray Foote issued this statement on its Facebook page in response to one of a number of readers who’d posted links to the story:

It’s a telling reaction.

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(Real) email correspondence forwarded by an alert reader:

From: HARTY, Sam
Sent: 21 October 2014 16:58
To: MILIBAND, Ed
Subject: Official Copy of Vow

Dear Ed

Mr Clarke has a constituent who would like a formal copy of the Vow that was made prior to the Scottish Referendum.

Is it possible for your office to provide Tom with a copy for his constituent?

Thanking you in anticipation of your co-operation.

Regards

Sam

On behalf of

TOM CLARKE MP

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Owen Jones in the Guardian today:

“If Scottish Labour does indeed die, historians will ponder just how the party of Keir Hardie allowed itself to be outflanked on the left by a Scottish National Party committed to George Osborne-style cuts to corporation tax.”

You know where we’re going with this one, right?

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From the Twitter account of the Aberdeen Conservative and Unionist Association last night, during the First Minister’s appearance on Question Time from Liverpool:

Just a couple of things.

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Today’s Herald carries a report from the initial meeting of the Smith Commission on “enhanced devolution” for the Scottish Parliament. The paper quotes from what seems to be a press release issued by the Commission, in which it explains that it thinks the people of Scotland are idiotic, drooling simpletons who’ll swallow anything.

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The Labour-friendly elements of the press made much play yesterday of an Ipsos MORI poll which showed an unusually high level of support in the UK for remaining in the EU (while ignoring one by YouGov that showed a majority in favour of leaving).

But a piece in today’s Times throws the reality into sharp relief, and illustrates why the Yes movement hasn’t simply lain down and died after losing the referendum.

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Here’s Nick Clegg in many of today’s papers:

“Alex Salmond reminds me of a Japanese soldier found in the jungle 20 years after the war had finished, still ducking at every shadow, thinking the war was still on. At some point, you have to call it a day and accept that the people have spoken.

After a ferociously contested referendum that has dominated debate north of the border for years, not just months, there was a pretty emphatic result.

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This is a tough time to be writing analytically about Scottish politics, and for once we have a degree of empathy with our fellow journalists in the mainstream press. Very little worthy of discussion is actually happening, yet there are still pages to fill. Perhaps we should have taken a month off rather than two weeks.

That’s not to say that nothing NOTABLE is happening. The SNP more than tripling its membership in a month to the point where it may well be four times that of the three Unionist parties put together, for example, is a remarkable event, but there’s very little worthwhile to be said about it other than observing the simple fact. Nobody knows who these new members are, why they joined or what they want, and anyone speculating about it is just filling space with the sound of their own voice for the sake of it.

Similarly, discussing the Smith Commission report is mostly a pointless exercise. Its conclusions will be based on the submissions of the three Westminster parties – we can all, surely, discount the idea that any significant amount of the SNP’s contribution will be included – and those have been known since March.

And in any event, as we noted at the weekend, the Commission’s report will be an irrelevance. It’ll be followed in short order by a general election, and whichever party takes the keys to 10 Downing Street will not be bound by its conclusions. If the eventual devo package reflects the Commission’s findings it’ll be by pure electoral coincidence – if the Tories get in they’ll implement the Strathclyde Commission, and if it’s Labour it’ll be “devo nano”. (Why would either of them, having just won an election, voluntarily and needlessly compromise on their own preferred plan?)

So what to talk about?

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