After this week’s STV and BBC debates, in which the Scottish Labour branch-office manager’s combative performances were favourably received by the Scottish media, Wings exclusively interviews armed-forces enthusiast Jim Murphy for a response to the latest numbers from YouGov, pausing first for the delivery of some refreshments.
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.
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.
Credit is due to those of the Scottish media who have taken up this site’s challenge to ask Labour the key question of the 2015 election debate in Scotland – “Are Labour prepared to form a government if they’re not the largest party in a hung parliament?”
(Because if the answer is yes then Labour’s entire Scottish election strategy – “Vote SNP get Tories!” – crumbles to dust, and if it’s no then Labour is saying that it’d be prepared to abandon not just Scotland but the whole UK to another five years of Conservative government purely out of spite against the SNP.)
Three of the party’s elected representatives have now been asked the question on air – James Kelly MSP by John Mackay of Scotland Tonight a week ago, branch office leader Jim Murphy by BBC Scotland’s Gary Robertson yesterday, and the shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran last night (below), again by STV’s John Mackay.
As you can see, Scotland’s voters still await an answer. But on this page we’ll keep track of all the swerves, evasions and dodges until we get one, if we ever do.
As readers will know, when professional broadcast journalists can’t or won’t do their jobs properly, we’re not above jumping in ourselves.
So when someone tweeted to tell us that Jim Murphy had just started a phone-in on London station LBC, it seemed an ideal opportunity to quickly ring up and try directly asking him the question that Scottish Labour really, really don’t want to answer.
Here’s what happened.
An alert reader pointed us to this edition of Newsnight we’d missed earlier this month, featuring the renowned Conservative Party chairman and liar Grant Shapps MP.
The population of the UK, according to the 2011 census, is 63,128,000. Shapps just told us he only cares about 11,200 of them (or 0.018%), because apparently those are all the votes the Tories need to turn round to secure an absolute majority in May’s general election. We very much doubt that any of the 23 target constituences he mentions, across which the required 11,200 votes are spread, are in Scotland.
And that, readers, is what the Tories (and, for that matter, Labour) really think of “the democratic will of the British people”. You may want to keep it in mind when you vote.
Respect to John MacKay of STV, who on last night’s Scotland Tonight asked Labour MSP James Kelly the question this site has called for about whether Labour would stand aside and let the Tories rule if the latter were the largest party after May’s election, but Labour had enough seats to win a confidence vote and form the government with backing from the SNP and/or other parties.
Kelly, unsurprisingly, flapped and blustered and totally evaded it. But then we doubt he has the authority to make the tea in Scottish Labour, let alone speak for the party on key policy issues. If the question isn’t put repeatedly by all of the media to more senior Labour figures until an answer is produced, we’ll be wanting to know why.
We have to give Jim Murphy credit – on this week’s Sunday Politics he started off with the subtle, misleading but technically-accurate version of Labour’s line about the “biggest party forming the government”, which involves making the true but irrelevant observation that in the past it’s usually been the case. (Mainly because UK elections almost always give the biggest party a comfortable majority.)
But it only took a couple of minutes of questioning for the Scottish branch manager to lose his cool and resort to the comprehensively debunked flat-out lie again.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
