Wings Over Scotland

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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The latest sales figures for newspapers in Scotland are out today, most of them showing the now-traditional hefty year-on-year declines. (The Scottish Daily Express was the biggest loser, shedding a hefty 14% of its readership in the last 12 months, with the Guardian, Daily Mirror and Daily Record close behind.)

What the stats throw into striking relief, though, is the pent-up demand for a Yes-supporting paper. Despite having been created in just three weeks on a shoestring budget and not being distributed by some of the biggest supermarket chains, The National – on the worst day so far recorded for its sales – would nevertheless crash straight into the chart in seventh place, already neck-and-neck with its 231-year-old sister paper The Herald and just a few thousand behind the Star and the Express.

The full ordered table is below.

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Social media has been alive in recent days with No voters concocting a fiendish plan to vote tactically against the SNP at next year’s general election. Labour supporters are urging people to vote Conservative rather than let the SNP take any new seats which might be used to secure a better devolution settlement for Scotland.

We’re not sure the Nats have too much to worry about.

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We’ve noted on a number of occasions that the BBC is fond of using the late-night papers review show on the News channel as a sneaky little Nat-bashing section in which London-based broadsheet journalists (always, always Unionists) get to display the full depth of their arrogant cluelessness about Scottish politics.

Last night’s, however, was quite something even by the usual standards.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it gives us great pleasure today to present to you the most unnecessary words ever printed in the history of Scottish political journalism.

“Even Nicola Sturgeon agrees that Scots should vote Labour to make sure David Cameron’s Conservatives do not win the 2015 General Election, Margaret Curran will say today.

The Shadow Scottish Secretary will make the claim in a speech to a Labour summit in Perth when she is also due to attack the SNP.”

On current polling, it won’t be long before Ms Curran emulates her script.

From a YouGov poll of young (18-24) voters today:

Now that’s quite the thing.

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The Herald, 1 June 2014:

“[A] YouGov poll compiled by Better Together suggests most Scots want to share pensions and benefits across the UK. Labour released the findings ahead of the launch of its referendum campaign, due to take place at a rally in Glasgow on Tuesday.

Scottish leader Johann Lamont will be joined by former prime minister Gordon Brown at the event. 

Ms Lamont said: ‘According to this Better Together polling, most Scots understand that our pensions and benefits are better being backed across the United Kingdom, spread across 60 million people rather than six million.'”

We’ll let Johann’s rather shaky grasp of the UK and Scottish population sizes slide on this occasion – she taught English, not maths or geography. The important thing is that the No vote in the referendum assured that benefits would remain a central, shared and uniform facet of British life. Right?

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A real letter sent out by the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland this week.

Someone do us a favour and explain to her in language she’ll understand that as the Scottish Parliament isn’t trusted by her Westminster pals to control its own resources, the price of oil doesn’t actually impact on “the SNP’s economic plan” in any way whatsoever, would you? We’re not very good with crayons.

Phew, eh?

(April 2014 on the left, December 2014 on the right.)

George Osborne’s autumn mini-Budget is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be read late at night. The programme of swingeing cuts to public services it outlined would chill the blood of anyone with an ounce of compassion in their souls.

Fortunately, this site concerns itself chiefly with Scottish politics, so we can leave the full horror to others, turn away in fear and focus on a couple of decisions that are particularly interesting in a constitutional context.

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Alert readers will already be aware that we’re not the biggest fans of prospective Scottish Labour deputy “leader” Kezia Dugdale. Even this site, however, doesn’t think the Lothian list MSP is so inept and slow-witted that she could single-handedly be held responsible for the party losing the next two general elections.

Some of her comrades, however, have less faith.

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