Information request #2
Seeking some light entertainment, this morning we belatedly got round to reading a piece by Jim Murphy MP on Labour Uncut while we were waiting for First Minister’s Questions to begin. (An event we were startled to see Labour and the Tories both turn up to, recklessly lending legitimacy to an undemocratic one-party dictatorship.)
Murphy’s piece was the usual drivel, but a line caught our eye:
“Opposition to independence increased from 50% in January to 55% in June then 58% in the latest poll. At the moment, the nearer we get to the vote the further away the SNP look like winning it.”
Naturally we were confused. Murphy’s piece was published on Tuesday, so you’d have thought by then he’d be aware of the “latest poll”, which was published by the Herald on Monday and in fact showed “opposition to independence” plunging from 58% to 48% – a level below even the lowest figure in Murphy’s timeline, dating back a year.
Can anyone point us to this more recent poll than Monday’s? Cheers.
I never did get a reply to my polite email asking why Labour Uncut considered it acceptable to publish the defamatory piece on Alex Salmond, incidentally.
It’s a horrid little piece. It reminded me a lot of his rant against the SNP when the BBC interviewed him directly after holding onto his seat in the 2010 UK election.
I hope someone is standing next to him with a camera when the referendum result is announced in 2014…
He is a nasty piece of work. Murphy is like Sarwar, nobody knows what he believes in, he hates the SNP with a passion because he is solely a careerist.
I think Muttley hits the nail on the head. Apart from venomous hatred of SNP for kicking them out of power in Scotland (Holyrood & all those 1 party state local authorities) they have nothing to offer. Nothing.
A chip on each shoulder seems to be their badge of office.
Murphy is, of course a buffoon, barely a notch or two above Ian Davidson on the evolutionary ladder. As proximate evidence I would cite his penchant for counting all who are not explicitly in favour of independence along with those who are as fanatically opposed as himself. This inability to appreciate even the coarser nuances of opinion polls marks the man as an idiot.
I have to say I am curious as to what ‘Labour UnCut’ believe this contributes to anti-austerity measures???
This isnt the first anti-snp article they have run either, and here was me thinking they were set up to campaign against the Westminster led cuts we are all suffering under!
I was directed to successive Unionist (Labour) MPs in Westminster who only last week insisted that Holyrood adopts the same Electoral Commission standards of Westminster! Why are they demanding that Holyrood declares that a minimum of 40% of all Scots must vote against the UK?
What is Labour Uncut? Is this a forum for Labour Party membership to freely discuss taboo subjects such as Trident, MoD cutbacks, Irakistan, Torture, Universal benefits, Nationalised Health service free at the point of use, State funded education for our children, free School meals, Sleaze, Fraudulent expenses, edited info on Party election donation cheques, the gagging of East Lothian CLP, why we have had three SLab leadership resignations in succession, the source of our irrational hatred of the elected Scottish government?
I’ve said this a few times now. I honestly believe we are approaching the 50% mark on the ‘Yes’ vote. I don’t believe even for a second that it is at 28% as usually quoted by the media. I don’t even place it anywhere in the 30’s!!!
I think at present the Yes vote is sitting at around 42 to 45%. I spoke to one of my colleagues yesterday. At present, he has deep reservations about what the future will be for Scotland; He fears the worst …but startling, he says he is going to vote Independence on two accounts.
1. The future is not going to get better in the Union. He fears it will get worse. Much worse.
2. He is a Scot. End of story; therefore it is his moral obligation to serve his nation. ‘Scotland forever’, in other words.
Barring some catastrophe (WW3!! which would unite the UK (aargh)), the mood of the nation is shifting very slowly to the Yes Vote. All we need now is Osborne to come out with new Benefit cuts, tax cuts for the rich, and an implosion in the Labour ranks, where some of their MSPs basically jump to the thought of Independence, and the chance to start again.
Here’s hoping!!
Doug,
I hope someone is standing next to him with a camera when the referendum result is announced in 2014…
It is not him the camera’s will be on, it will be Lamont. It will be her face that will be shown on TV when the dawning horror of what is happening becomes apparent to her; that Scotland is heading for Independence.
For the likes of Darling, Murphy, etc, I couldn’t care about. They will survive, and shapeshift into the new Scottish setup. They know there will be new jobs for them, and a new career in the parliament. Jobs for the boys…
But for Johann…it will the end. The fallout and blame will be utterly dumped on her head; she will be the main scapegoat, and her political career will be TRULY over. There will be no position left for her in politics, and she will be remembered as a shambolic failure.
After all, think about it …who …is going to hire her after independence ???
To be quite frank if going with my previous comment. This is a death-fight for the SNP and Labour. Whoever loses the referendum is truly finished. Independence may remain in the hearts for over a million Scots, but the media will truly savage Salmond and the SNP if they lose the referendum. They will make such a mockery of them that it could damage the party for a generation.
For Labour, they will collapse utterly if they lose. Without the power of the Unions south of the border, and the abandonment of the Scottish Labour Party from Milliband, then Labour will die up here. What arises from ashes though could be the best thing for Labour members; a new Socialist Party with proper socialist values.
@JLT
Interesting thoughts on Yes figures JLT. For what it’s worth, talking to friends and colleagues I think the definite Yes’s at the moment are around 3 to 4 in 10. The key difference from the bilge promulgated in the ‘Scottish’ MSM is that my impression is that there are a LOT – around another 3 to 4 in ten – of undecideds who are looking to be persuaded to vote Yes. That means there is a diehard 30-40% No vote.. although it remains to be seen how ‘diehard’ that really is..
What numpties like Murphy fail to take into account is the fact that the vast majority of those who are undecided – and a fair few of those in the NO camp – have already rejected the status quo. They are, to a varying extent, committed to change. Given that the Bitter Together mob represents outright opposition to any change, why would any sensible person imagine those votes might go their way.
These polls are almost totally meaningless. The big swing will come in the weeks and days leading up to referendum day. And unless Alex Salmond and Blair Jenkins are caught dining on spit-roasted babies, the swing is all going to a YES vote.
@JLT
When Scotland votes for independence ‘Scottish’ Labour as we know it will cease to be – I doubt they have significant sources of cash coming from Scotland at the moment and external party political funding (e.g. from the rUK) for a true Scottish Labour party will not be permitted I am certain.
Mind you, Lamont could emigrate and end up in the Lords beside Reid, Foulkes and McConnell. That’d be a laugh.
What I will never understand is how you go from joining a Labour Party, established for the purpose of giving the working man a political voice and a vote within a democratic system to sitting in the House of Lords, in an UNELECTED capacity but taking £300.00 per day for just turning up, paid for by the same working man whose political rights you claim to be upholding. I think I’d feel just a little ashamed were I in the Lords. I might just think I was a hypocrite and getting something for nothing.
OT
Did anyone see the Reporting Scotland piece with Glenn Campbell in Slovakia this afternoon (don`t know if it will be repeated in the evening – you know how the Beeb squeeze in their propaganda shorts)? Well, to cut a scare story short; basically, Glenn thinks there are people in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia who wonder how great a country Czechoslovakia could have been if it had stayed together (no Czechs or Slovaks offered their opinion to back up Glenn`s assumption).
There was a heavy hint that the Czech Republic and Slovakia are kinda crap individual countries, and that they blew it when they split.
WTF?
Anyway, apologies for going OT.
I bet that Glenn Campbell will find in Czech Rep. and Slovakia, the ONLY two people who favour uniting both countries back together!
Yesitis
I heard the gype briefly on Radio Scotland this morning trying to get some Czech or Slovak guy to say that breaking up a country is not a good idea but the guy was having none of it.
Note to Glenn: the UK is not a country.
Why didn’t he go the whole hog and suggest reforming the Soviet Bloc? And perhaps a natty concrete wall along the edge to keep the evil separatists out? Better together tovarich!
JLT – your work colleague sort of encapsulates two of the factors that I think will see many undecided voters find themselves voting “YES” in 2014.
1) The foll who will think “damned if we do, damned if we don’t”. Okay, some of these people will end up in the “better the devil you know” camp, but I think more people are inclined to be in the “fuck it, let’s give it a bash” camp.
2) The latent patriots. The kind of people who don’t normally pay much attention to ideas like having pride in your country and whatnot, but who if you showed them the debates in Westminster over the past couple of days, would find themselves surprising themselves at how insulted they felt at seeing their country being denigrated the way it was.
Presented with this once in a lifetime chance to turn Scotland back into a proper country, I’m convinced the majority of the undecided voters will realise they can’t possibly vote NO, and that none of their reservations are really a good enough reason to pass up this chance.
As for Johann/Murphy, Johann is too much of an idiot for me to build up enough reserves of schadenfreude against her. She’s a patsy, and she doesn’t even know it. On the contrary, folk like Murphy, Darling and wee Dougie Alexander are clever enough to know exactly what they’re doing, and the spite with which they talk about independence will make it VERY satisfying to see Scotland giving them a collective middle finger.
On radio Scotland this morning it was the deputy Prime Minister of Slovakia who was interviewed and he said (I paraphrase here) ” After independence things were a bit tough but now Slovakia is doing well.2 He also said that negotiations went on for about two years prior to independence. Can anyone do a link to the radio scotland interview from this morning? I do not have the necessary skills
@ Doug Daniel
Murphy, Darling and wee Dougie Alexander are clever enough to know exactly what they’re doing, and the spite with which they talk about independence will make it VERY satisfying to see Scotland giving them a collective middle finger.
Oh I’m with you a hundred percent on that, I have a stupid grin on my coupon just imagining that.
OOPS! Where did that errant 2 come from?
It came from you taking your finger off the shift key too soon when you were trying to close the quotation marks.
– Morag’s helpful infirmation service.
@ Morag
Infirmation service? Is this on the NHS?
I saw that too late to edit it.
Hi Doug,
Seriously mate, the pair of us were in the works van at the time. I just about crashed the van after he told me about voting for independence; especially after he had spent a minute worrying about the future in a new Scotland. So when he went ‘Doom.., gloom…, poverty…, nae money…, aw god…but …I am going to vote…
‘Yes’
I had to do a double-take just to make sure he wasn’t taking the pi$$ …hence…almost crashing the van.
To be honest, it was the ‘I’m Scottish, and this is our land. I have to do it because …it’s Scotland!’ That is what wins it for him …
‘because …it’s Scotland!’
It didn’t matter about the crap that could follow …it was a sense of …that he’ll put up with whatever disasters await us, for as long as in the long term, his children and grandchildren eventually grow up in a better nation. He’ll suffer the consequences for as long as his own children don’t. He only wants a better future for them. We suffer the changes; our kids reap the rewards.
My reply to him was basically, that if we do go independent, then I think, just about every Scot (Nationalist and even most of the Unionists !!) will fight, shout, and bleed to get this nation going in the first few years. We have to! We can’t allow failure to be an option.
I like to think that from 2040 onwards, that our generation delivered a country that was 100% green, a leader in Renewables, a thriving financial center in Edinburgh, tourism going great guns, and whisky is such a desired commodity all over the world, that it is like a mini oil boom itself. And that is still not including the Oil and Gas iindustry which will still be about. I hope our nation becomes a beacon of moral socialism, highly educated due to free tuition and it’s people have massive ambition.
That…is what I hope for, for a Scotland come the mid-21st Century…
MajorBloodnok
Totally agree Mate! That’s why I think this is now a fight to the death between Labour and the SNP. I honestly believe that one of them is going to be mortally wounded from all of this.
The one thing that I will say is this though…just say it is a No vote; the Labour party may survive, but it will be a walking zombie of a party up here; it just might as well be dead. It will be utterly ignored from Westminster, and a future Tory-UKIP coalition will run riot over Scotland and burn Labour anyway. In the end…Scottish Labour may end up wishing it had jumped ship and voted for independence way back in the first place!!
MajorBloodnok
Mind you, Lamont could emigrate and end up in the Lords beside Reid, Foulkes and McConnell. That’d be a laugh.
Seriously mate … if we do become Independent, then she will be our Generations version of King John Balliol….
She would be a ‘Toom Tabard’ ….empty suit …
James Jess Caldwell
“…the gagging of East Lothian CLP……
What’s that all about? Just interested.
IMHO, Scottish Labour is already ignored by Westminster except when they can be made use of…if they had a shred of the integrity of people like Mick McGahey and the founding fathers, they would embrace Scottish Independence…for themselves as well as the nation…
@JLT
Great post from you at 7:54pm by the way. Says it all. Glad you didn’t crash the van!