Following the striking success of their tactical voting campaign at the general election of 2015, the Unionist parties are keen to repeat the strategy this year, and have once again deployed THE WHEEL.
There’s only one problem. They can’t quite agree on the colours of the spokes.
Kezia Dugdale tells voters in the Borders, Highlands and a number of other areas that voting Tory is a better way to stop the SNP than voting for her own party’s candidates.
We assume she’ll be suspending herself shortly.
I went to the dentist this morning, and boy was I ever in for a shock when I got back.
So I guess we’d better talk about this for a minute.
If you weren’t listening to the Kaye Adams show earlier, and you probably weren’t, this was my call to Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie.
(Alert readers may have noticed that I had to adopt a wee bit of subterfuge to get on by saying – truthfully – that I was from Bathgate, because BBC Scotland don’t tend to take my calls when I say where I am.)
As you’ll hear, Rennie had no answer to the question (even when put to him again by Adams), trying to deflect the issue onto SNP BAD instead.
His position was that the British people should have the right to another vote in case they’ve changed their mind about Brexit, even though there’s been no material change of circumstances, but that the Scottish people SHOULDN’T have the right to another vote on independence even though there HAS been a huge material change.
All I can say is that I tried.
No.11: Kathi, from Bernburg, Germany.
From today’s interview on Good Morning Scotland:
That needs transcribing for the record.
Because in the 124-page Labour manifesto released yesterday, these 115 words are the entire amount of text devoted to Scotland:
(That’s not a fake screenshot, btw. The giant Union Jack is really there.)
So let’s take a very quick stroll through them.
We were intrigued to hear Labour activist Duncan Hothersall tell radio listeners this morning that his party’s opposition to independence was rooted in “Labour values”, and most specifically by his assertion that “nationalism and socialism are opposites”.
So we thought we’d take a look back at our last Panelbase opinion poll, which we conducted in February, and see what the values of Unionists were.
The Labour general election manifesto is officially launched today, as if it mattered. It will reportedly say that the party will block a second independence referendum if it’s in power at Westminster, which of course it won’t be.
And while Labour’s position on anything – particularly anything involving Scotland – is a complete irrelevance, it’s still quite fun to listen to them tying themselves in knots.
So with no further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you Duncan Hothersall.
Readers who’ve been following the ongoing avalanche of disturbing revelations about bigotry, sectarianism and racism among the ranks of Scottish Conservative politicians probably won’t need to be told that the party’s talent pool is desperately shallow.
More than a quarter of its Scottish candidates for the forthcoming UK general election actually already hold elected office – nine of them as councillors, four as MSPs, one as an MEP and of course the sole defending member, David Mundell.
(Several of the councillors have only been in their jobs for a matter of a few days and are already looking to scurry off to London for new ones.)
As for the rest, though – and following the discovery that at least two of its council candidates earlier this month had no idea that they were standing – the party’s clearly been doing some more hasty press-ganging.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
Wings Over Scotland
