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.
Alert readers may recall that since the election of Jim Murphy as Scottish Labour branch office manager he’s barely gone a moment without promising to “reach out” to Yes voters. Last month he even pledged that he’d employ some in his team if he won the Labour job.
We imagine they’ll be fair hammering on his door after the latest addition to his crew, because today’s Herald reveals that Murphy’s new chief of staff, and joining “Better Together” director Blair McDougall among Jim’s backroom boys, is to be our old pal John “there will be no referendum” McTernan.
“Wait, this story’s entirely true. Do something, Torcuil.”
“Sorted, boss.”
It is, we’ve remarked before, often difficult to satirise Scottish Labour, because it’s hard to think of anything more fatuous, transparently hypocritical or just plain idiotic than the things they actually say for real. The party’s recent demand that the Scottish Government should set up a “resilience fund” to cushion the blow of falls in oil prices – or as everyone else on Earth usually calls it, an “oil fund” – is only the latest example.
There are just five months between the two tweets above. Yet Labour seemingly believes that the Scottish public will already have completely forgotten that the party spent most of the last two years telling Scots an oil fund was a mad, impossible idea.
But it’s even more ludicrous than it sounds.
We’ve got nothing today, readers. We don’t want to turn into Wings Over Jim Murphy, but otherwise the Scottish political scene is a bit tumbleweedy. Tell us something interesting that we should be covering. Or just a fun fact, or a joke, or anything.
In the light of the absolute horror at Charlie Hebdo today, it’s either that or we’re going to start running cartoons of Mohammed on principle.
It’s always tricky coming back to the office after the holidays. You get a bit ring-rusty and it can take a few days before you’re firing on all cylinders again.
So we’re going to be charitable and assume that lack of match fitness was the cause of Scottish Labour’s astonishing multi-track trainwreck yesterday.
From today’s Telegraph:
Actual number of children belonging to Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell: 0.
You literally can’t make this stuff up.
We had to extend our festive semi-break for a day to deal with some administrative matters, readers, but it’s just as well, because the thing that happened today would have defied our best attempts at either analysis or satire.
That’s a real thing we didn’t make up. Saints preserve us.
There’s a new hot topic among the Westminster commentariat.
Because desperate times call for desperate measures.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
