Wings Over Scotland

We remain perplexed, readers, by the apparent total lack of interest in the mainstream Scottish media about how many members the Scottish Labour “party” has.

Membership levels are a topical subject in the light of the extraordinary explosion in SNP and Green membership after the referendum, and with a general election just months away in which the make-up of Westminster’s 59-strong Scottish contingent could be crucial to the shape of UK politics for the next five years.

The number of members the main Unionist party north of the border can call on to knock doors and deliver leaflets will therefore be a very significant factor in the outcome. Yet on this morning’s Sunday Politics, when presented with an ideal and pertinent opportunity to question new Scottish “leader” Jim Murphy on the subject, Gordon Brewer didn’t even try to ask. What’s with that?

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We suppose we should offer a few thoughts on this, then.

And we don’t mean Kezia Dugdale’s freakishly gigantic hands.

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In an alternative universe, Keir Hardie reacts to news of the election of Jim Murphy.

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Whatever happened to that show, eh?

As alert readers may have noticed from social media, there’s very little going on in the world of Scottish politics right now so we’re having a wee Q&A session on Ask.FM to while away the time until we see who’s won Labour’s poisoned chalice tomorrow. If there’s anything you ever wanted to know about Wings, or me personally, why not pop over there and join us?

(Rude or boring questions will of course be deleted unanswered. “Rude” in this case includes asking questions that have already been answered. There’s currently a big backlog, but I’m working through it, and the link will stay live for the forseeable future.)

One of our ever-alert agents uncovered this for us today. Published quietly last week by the House Of Commons Library and completely unremarked-upon by the Scottish media, it’s a document whose introductory text makes the relevant point concisely and eloquently without any need for elaboration or explanation on our part.

“The impact of removing Scottish MPs from the records of historic Commons divisions is also estimated. Of approximately 3,600 divisions to occur between 26th June 2001 and 26 September 2014, 22 (0.6%) would have concluded differently had the votes of Scottish MPs not been counted.

The note also compares, for each division since 2001, the lobby in which the majority of MPs per constituent country of the UK have voted to the lobby in which the majority of UK MPs voted.

In the current Parliament the lobby in which the majority of English MPs have voted has coincided with that of the majority of UK MPs for 99% of divisions. The majority of Scottish MPs has coincided with the majority of UK MPs for 24% of divisions; that of Welsh MPs for 26% of divisions.”

The emphasis is ours. England gets what England’s MPs vote for more than 99% of the time. Scotland gets what Scotland’s MPs vote for less than a quarter of the time. We’ll leave it at that.

Labour have already been widely derided for their feeble plan to increase the minimum wage to £8 by 2020 – a level likely to barely keep pace with inflation. But it turns out they’ve got a goal even more pathetic for people trying to survive on meagre incomes.

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Today’s media is dominated by reports on the release by the US government of a deeply horrifying dossier admitting and detailing the massive scale of torture carried out by the CIA on often-innocent detainees during the USA’s “war on terror”.

You can’t chuck a brick at the internet without hitting a hundred links on the subject, so we’re not going to pick any out in particular, but many reflect on the UK’s willing complicity in many of the abuses, with the Labour government of Tony Blair having allowed Prestwick Airport to be used as a stop-off for torture flights.

There’s also a rather telling article in the Scotsman.

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Just keeping you in the loop, readers.

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Alex Salmond as the Terminator. Any way you slice it it’s a remarkable mental image from the mind of a clearly distraught James Kirkup of the Telegraph.

Apparently death wouldn’t stop him anyway. We’ve actually cut this clip before the point where the woman from the Economist calls the former First Minister a “zombie who just keeps on powering through to the end of the horror movie”. Of course, if you think of the Union as the horror movie, it’s not the worst analogy we’ve ever heard.

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This is Tory activist Sarah Robb. She’s not a very nice person. (We don’t feel too bad about saying that, as she’s no fan of ours either.)

But, y’know, Tory activist, not a nice person – no news there, right?

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With polls almost all predicting a hung parliament at next year’s UK general election, every seat counts. So the beleaguered Labour Party must have had hopes of securing a constituency like Gordon in Aberdeenshire.

The Lib Dem incumbent Malcolm Bruce is stepping down, almost certainly taking his substantial personal vote with him, and the party’s choice of replacement, ex-BBC journalist Christine Jardine, managed to pull in just 1,940 votes in neighbouring Aberdeen Donside when she stood there for the Scottish Parliament last year.

In 2010 Labour came third in the seat, but just 1,016 votes behind the SNP, and with Scots traditionally inclined to back Labour at Westminster elections Gordon would surely have had to be down as a winnable target for Ed Miliband.

So the Labour candidate selected to contest the seat – before Alex Salmond had declared an intent to stand, making the Nats hot favourites – is quite an eye-opener.

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