From today’s Guardian:
And as well as being bad news for the whole UK, we already know what that means for Scotland too. Because Labour has openly said, over and over, what its plans are.
We’re rather kicking ourselves for not having spotted this one when it was staring us in the face, so kudos to Welsh professor of political science Roger Scully for the catch.
In the 2009 European elections, UKIP got 16.5% of the vote in the UK as a whole, and 5.2% in Scotland – a gap of 11.3%. In this year’s election the tallies were 27.5% in the UK and 10.5% in Scotland – a gap of 17%.
In other words, despite all the bluster from Unionists about how Scotland can no longer claim to be different to the rest of the UK in terms of supporting Nigel Farage’s party, in fact the degree of difference has substantially increased, by a whopping 55%.
It just seems worth pointing out.
According to Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood Magazine, this afternoon Johann Lamont issued a press release bizarrely calling on all supporters of “progressive” politics to unite against the SNP and UKIP. Now, that’s fairly mindboggling in itself in all sorts of ways, but we can’t help wondering whether she ran it past her deputy first.
Because that tweet raises a whole host of questions.
Some considered thoughts on the evening’s events, then.
Yeah, nice work, Britain.
For quite some time now, and in particular since the turn of the year, this site’s been pointing out two things about polling for the 2015 UK general election.
One is that Labour’s lead has been in steady decline since 2012. The other is that the polls present a falsely optimistic picture for Ed Miliband’s party, as ultimately a significant proportion of UKIP support is likely to vote tactically, because only two people have a chance of becoming Prime Minister and only one of them is promising what UKIP supporters want above all else – a referendum on leaving the EU.
Pleasingly, on one level at least, today we were proved right.
Another UKIP voter. This one’s a bit more interesting.
Because the thing about UKIP is that – by their own admission – they don’t actually have any policies about anything other than cracking down on immigration and leaving the EU. Their official position is that the rest of their manifesto is blank paper, to be formulated on all other subjects at their summer conference.
Yet even in the complete absence of any other policies, voters are happy to tell TV cameras that the party “their political agenda suits my opinions”. What does that tell us? It tells us what the 2015 UK general election will be fought on, and it’s not Ed Miliband’s “cost of living crisis”.
And let’s make Britain great again.
(Labour only needed to gain three seats from 60 for control of Walsall. They failed.)
An email we just got from the Office for National Statistics:
“Hello! The ONS is launching a compendium of statistics on 5 June which enables people to compare stats for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland across subjects such as their economies and populations.”
We’re not entirely sure where they even got our address, but our curiosity’s piqued.
Watch (from 5m 50s) as David Cameron refuses to commit to having a bill for more powers for Holyrood in the first Queen’s Speech should he win the 2015 election.
Vote no, get nothing, and get it never.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
