Wings Over Scotland

On the left below is part of a Scottish Labour election leaflet that’s currently being put through Scottish letterboxes, featuring an alleged quote from an alleged NHS Scotland nurse identified as “Suzanne” from Clackmannanshire.

On the right is the CastingNow profile of an actress named only as “Suzanne” from Clackmannanshire, who describes herself by saying: “I’m very good at making people believe things which aren’t true hence why I’ve always been told to pursue acting.”

While they have very similarly-shaped faces and features, we have no idea whether the two Suzannes are the same person or if it’s just a strange and potentially amusing coincidence. But the point is, there’s no way of finding out.

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The election of Jim Murphy as branch office leader has so far failed to produce a shift in the party’s catastrophic polling figures north of the border, with most projections still suggesting that Labour’s Scottish seats will be reduced to single figures in May.

Last night we catalogued a series of its howlers since Murphy took over, culminating in a humiliating climbdown over some false claims about cancelled operations in the Scottish NHS. The party’s Scottish health spokeswoman Jenny Marra turned up on today’s Good Morning Scotland to discuss the subject, and in doing so demonstrated exactly why Scottish voters are deserting it in hundreds of thousands.

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There’s been considerable mirth in nationalist circles ever since Jim Murphy became leader of the Scottish Labour branch office late last year. Announcing that he wanted to “reach out” to Yes voters, his idea of an olive branch was to hire three of the most divisive and obnoxious figures to be found anywhere in his party’s entire hinterland, in a move about as conciliatory and unifying as when Rangers signed Mo Johnston.

Counter-intuitively, the link-up with Blair McDougall (who headed Murphy’s successful leadership bid) is the one that makes the most sense. After all, as “Better Together” campaign director McDougall was responsible for turning a 30-point lead for No into a 10-point one, so he clearly knows something about how to appeal to Yes people.

But for a man widely cited as smart and savvy, Murphy also staffing his office with comically unpleasant Twitter troll John McTernan and the nutter-fringe imbecile Susan Dalgety – someone who was last seen resigning in disgrace after likening the SNP to the Omagh bombers – was harder to understand.

And the non-stop trainwreck that has followed leaves only one explanation.

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The abusive Facebook comments recently directed at Labour MP Margaret Curran and highlighted in a piece on the STV website today make us sigh. Not only are they horrible but they’re counter-productive, in every sense of the term – they’re not going to change Curran’s mind about anything by yelling at her, and they feed a narrative about “vile cybernats” that the media is all too eager to gleefully perpetuate.

So let’s make something clear from the off: shut up, idiots. You’re not helping.

But then let’s tell the rest of the story.

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A number of readers last night sent us copies of the response to complaints they’d made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation about the Daily Record’s infamous “The Vow” front cover. We attach the full judgement at the bottom of this article, and as far as we’re concerned it’s fair and accurate. The Vow was a deliberate deception, but it didn’t break any rules – it merely relied on readers misinterpreting it.

The bit we’re still interested in is the paragraph above.

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The No camp really do seem to be the world’s worst winners. In a mischievous piece of trolling today, the First Minister announced that the SNP’s policy of not voting on English matters at Westminster was to come to an end, and that it would intervene for the protection of the NHS, on the reasonable grounds of avoiding Barnett cuts to the Scottish budget were privatisation south of the border to lead to lower spending.

The reaction from Labour and the Tories was predictable, with the latter accusing Sturgeon of throwing principle “out the window”. George Osborne, furthermore, was quoted in the Telegraph telling a Commons committee that:

“I think it would be very unfair to the whole United Kingdom if we had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was beholden on Scottish Nationalist votes in the next Parliament.”

And readers might be forgiven for thinking “Hang on, isn’t that what you wanted?”

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Some readers have been a bit dispirited by the findings of our Panelbase poll this week, which revealed a few quite socially-conservative views among the Scottish population and also found fairly small differences of opinion between Scots and the rest of the UK on a number of issues.

But to be downhearted about the findings is to miss a whole series of points.

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We apologise if the results of our twin social-attitudes polls of both Scotland and the rUK have been a little depressing so far, readers.

Depending on how you choose to look at things (and where you live), this next tranche of data is going to either cheer you up a little bit or make you feel even worse.

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Alert readers will know that we very often like to bring to your attention both Scottish Labour’s fondness for radically rewriting history and its frequent struggles with basic counting. Today, though, the North British branch office has spectacularly outdone itself and managed to pull off both at once. This is going to be hard to beat.

Above is an extract from the official record of today’s proceedings in the Scottish Parliament. And we can only applaud Rhoda Grant’s ambition.

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In the light of the announcement of Scottish Labour’s new chief of staff, we thought it might be worthwhile to summarise some of his views in one handy reference guide, for the benefit of left-wing Labour voters who may have voted Yes in the referendum but are now considering whether to return to the party this May.

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Labour 2014:

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This is Tory activist Sarah Robb. She’s not a very nice person. (We don’t feel too bad about saying that, as she’s no fan of ours either.)

But, y’know, Tory activist, not a nice person – no news there, right?

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