Wings Over Scotland

Social media is alive today with tales of people being refused a vote in the Labour leadership election on the grounds that they don’t support Labour values (if anyone even knows what those are any more). We suspect you’ll be hearing quite a bit about it in the press over the coming days.

The prevailing reaction seems to be slack-jawed astonishment at the planetary-scale car-crash the party has allowed to develop around the issue, with another “coup” story thrown in for good measure in the Telegraph.

We can only think of one way the farce could become even worse.

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Not our judgement, you understand, but that of Scottish Labour spokesclown Michael Kelly, former Lord Provost of Glasgow, speaking on today’s Good Morning Scotland:

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 19 August 2015, 2h 47m)
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Here’s John “there will be no referendum” McTernan in today’s Guardian:

So there’s definitely going to be a second referendum, the No campaign is going to win it again and a shattered SNP will collapse as a result, sending Labour triumphantly back to Holyrood power. (Having now come out on top in not one but two internal elections, presumably Kezia Dugdale is now also a “proven winner”.)

It’s just that we feel like we’ve heard that before somewhere.

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An update, then: as we write, our anti-poverty fundraiser (which set out to gather just £500 for a young woman in Kidderminster fined almost £330 for stealing a 75p pack of Mars bars out of desperate hunger after her benefits were sanctioned) stands at a phenomenal £14,395.

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Face, meet palm.

This spoon-faced howler was pointed out mirthfully by vile cybernats days ago, but we suspect that the person at Scottish Labour who knows how to work the internets only comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s going to be a long road back.

Earlier today Gordon Brown gave a speech in London, on a subject and for reasons which are unclear. It was widely trailed in the press, however, as an intervention in the Labour leadership campaign, with the particular goal of stopping Jeremy Corbyn from winning. It was – naturally – broadcast live and in full by the BBC News channel.

Corbyn wasn’t mentioned by name so far as we noticed, but to tell the truth we drifted in and out of the rambling, 49-minute, 30-page monologue full of celebrity namedrops and unconnected anecdotes, hypnotised as we were by Brown’s relentless pacing up and down the room like a caged animal.

Nobody who isn’t getting paid should have to endure the entire grimness of it, so using the magic of technology we’ve compressed it all down to a mere fraction of its length (just 20%) for you, but without losing any of the tone, content or intellectual nuance.

We offer it to you as an elegy. It marks the day that Labour reanimated the walking corpse of the only person left in the party that it considers to have any gravitas – not to win an election, but to try to crush the first man in living memory to enthuse tens of thousands of new members to join a political party in the hope of restoring the values it was created to uphold.

It is the day the soul of the Labour Party finally died.

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Here’s former Scottish Labour MP Tom Harris in today’s Sunday Times:

“The toughest job for an opposition leader is to get people’s attention and Kez will make a good job of that. She is different from what you’d normally expect.

But the only thing that would make people give Labour a second glance at the moment is offering something that I am absolutely opposed to, and that is independence. The only way we can attract voters back is by offering them what they want and that is independence.”

Wait, what now?

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Reporting on the election of Kezia Dugdale as Scottish Labour’s sixth leader in eight years, the BBC quotes her as saying “We are changing. I am part of a new generation. Someone without the baggage of the past”.

Keen followers of First Minister’s Questions will doubtless be excited to witness the weekly jousts, as the dynamic new regime of Kezia Dugdale sweeps out the tired old broom of Labour’s previous FMQs inquisitor, er, Kezia Dugdale.

Curiously, while the BBC was present and broadcasting live at the announcement of the new leader and deputy, neither’s acceptance speech was broadcast on TV, radio or online, which may well have surprised viewers and listeners who’ve become used to 50-minute prime-time Gordon Brown “intervention” specials.

In Dugdale’s case, our best guess is that the BBC didn’t want to have to fact-check it.

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There’s another rather bizarre Kenny Farquharson column in today’s Times. Under the headline “Holyrood wasn’t built for a one-party state”, it asserts that “the Scottish Parliament is no longer fit for purpose” on the grounds that the opposition parties are useless, as if that were the fault of the electoral system rather than their leaders.

After that, though, it just gets flat-out insulting.

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The papers these days are full of horrendous stories. For some reason this one just tripped a nerve, and we wanted to do something. Click here for details.

According to the Telegraph.

We’re not sure which one’s Michelle Mone.

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