He’d very kindly sent us a copy of the same article he’d sent the Beeb. We attach it below. We’ve highlighted in bold the only bits that didn’t make it into the BBC piece.
When our dear old pal the Scottish Labour super-goon Duncan Hothersall tweeted this earlier today, we just couldn’t resist a wee fact-check. We love to see people take the moral high ground, but numbers are fluid these days and you can’t be too careful.
Some manner of strange, alien vortex swallowed the very concept of arithmetic as we know it earlier this evening. The answer to the question “what is 431 minus 425?” was variously reported by the media as -7, -14, +31 and -30, with nowhere that we could find offering the seemingly obvious answer of “6”. But that was only the beginning.
Because language wasn’t immune from the sudden redefinitions either. The Tories, who finished 155 seats behind the SNP, nevertheless proclaimed themselves not only the winners of the election, but the sole winners.
With all 32 councils now having declared, the Scottish local elections are over and the SNP have won again, taking 431 seats. Last time round in 2012 they took 425.
You might think you know the difference between 431 and 425. But you don’t.
This post is mostly here to give people somewhere to chat about the council election results as they come in. But this song, with a hat-tip to alert reader SparkleMonkey, is dedicated specifically and personally to the now-former Scottish Labour councillor (and one-time leader of Aberdeen City Council) Willie Young, who was ejected by the electorate earlier today.
Today is going to be a day of realignment in Scottish politics, in which the Tories will formally become the main opposition to the SNP. (Having already pipped Labour to second at Holyrood and having as many Westminster MPs as them.) Expect modest SNP gains and big Tory ones, both mainly from Labour, who have already lost overall control of Glasgow, their last stronghold.
Everything’s different after today, folks. Scotland’s choice will never have been more stark: extreme Tories in the UK for years and years to come, or self-governance. Let the chips fall where the people choose.
Earlier this morning an alert reader directed us to an article in the Daily Express which seemed to make an eye-catchingly remarkable claim. It turned out to be one actually made by Ruth Davidson on Saturday (which had already been reported in the Express that day), when she appeared on Iain Dale’s radio show on LBC.
A 27% swing? From the SNP to the Tories? Putting the Tories AHEAD in the polls? That would be such a stupendously Earth-shattering development in Scottish politics that you’d think the media would have made more of it than a couple of mentions in an embarrassing low-circulation comic like the Express.
