We’ve had some fun with the appointment of John McTernan as Scottish Labour’s new chief of staff this week. But he’s far from the only talent in branch manager Jim Murphy’s backroom team. Particularly alert readers may recall an obscure figure from the independence campaign by the name of Blair McDougall, who was little-seen in the last year of the debate but we think was the director of “Better Together”.
It seems his modus operandi hasn’t changed much since the referendum.
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Tags: flat-out lies
Category
comment, scottish politics
Below is a clip from today’s “Morning Call” on BBC Radio Scotland. Speaking (from 16m 24s on the full show) are SNP MSP Mark McDonald, presenter Kaye Adams and Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald. There are a couple of noteworthy moments.
A caller named “George” had rung in concerned that the SNP might be giving up on their goal of independence, and Adams invited Mark McDonald to set his mind at rest. Here’s what happened in the next three minutes.
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Tags: misinformation, The Vow
Category
audio, comment, media, scottish politics, transcripts
Scottish Labour’s new chief of staff this afternoon:
Hmm, wonder who “the right people” are?
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Category
scottish politics
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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Category
reference, scottish politics
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.
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Category
comment, scottish politics, wtf
“Wait, this story’s entirely true. Do something, Torcuil.”
“Sorted, boss.”
Tags: and finally, arithmetic fail
Category
media, world
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.
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Tags: hypocrisy
Category
comment, history, media, scottish politics
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.
Category
admin, misc
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.
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Category
comment, scottish politics
