Wings Over Scotland

Our collection of toe-curling Johann Lamont interviews from Labour’s party-conference weekend wouldn’t be complete without the longest one, in which the BBC’s Brian Taylor proves that while he might be a toothless pussycat as an analyst, he takes no prisoners as an interviewer.

It’s been impossible to avoid a negative tone in the last few days, readers, because the Scottish Labour conference is like a dark storm-cloud of hatred, raining grimy, toxic lies and hypocrisy into the political landscape, and the print media wallowed around in the evil, sucking glaur it produced until everything was thick with concealing mud that plugged the yawning holes in the party’s promises.

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So far we’ve had no replies – not even automated form ones – from any of the members of Scottish Labour’s “Devolution Commission” we emailed these questions to. They’re fair and reasonable questions, asked politely on behalf of 200,000+ Wings readers and all Scottish voters, and there’s no conceivable excuse not to answer them. We’ll be keeping on at this until we get some. The email we sent is below.

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We’ll be honest with you, readers, we just couldn’t face transcribing Johann Lamont’s latest traffic-accident of an interview, this time 12 unforgettable minutes on Sunday Politics Scotland. But we did have a sudden flash of inspiration.

Above you can watch the interview for yourself. But although Johann’s mangled syntax and non-sequitur approach to answering questions is just too much pain for our poor tortured brain to endure twice in one week, we realised that what’s a lot quicker and easier to do is write down the gist of proceedings.

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We were going to inflict Johann Lamont’s latest BBC interview on you tonight, but frankly you’ve suffered enough for one week – it can wait until the morning. Instead, for this evening’s And Finally, we’ll let you enjoy another wonderful shot of some of Ms Lamont’s colleagues, this time at the end of her keynote conference address.

Well, we say “at”. Possibly we mean “as a result of”.

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We’ve just had a listen to our dear old pal Duncan Hothersall, who gamely appeared on Aye Right Radio this week to attempt to explain/defend Labour’s stillborn “Devo Nano” proposals. He wasn’t able to shed a lot of light on them, but in fairness we suspect that’s more down to the tangled, incoherent, illogical state of the proposals themselves rather than any shortfall of ability, so we’ll move on.

Indeed, the discussion raised more questions than it provided answers, and we’ve made a short list of some of them which Scotland’s journalists might want to crib from the next time they’ve got Johann Lamont or Anas Sarwar in front of a microphone.

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“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

It’s one of the most famous lines in the history of cinema. I’ve heard it a hundred times. And lately, to me, it’s a pretty fair summation of everything that’s gone wrong in Scottish Labour’s relationship with both its own members and its voters.

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Earlier this week we noticed the curious lack of media coverage of the “Devo Nano” report. As the document spelling out Labour’s “more powers” offer to Scotland in the event of a No vote, its release was ostensibly the most important milestone so far in the independence debate, so we found it very strange to see it get such a muted reception, particularly from the Daily Record.

Two days later the explanation arrived, in the form of the so-called “Red Paper”. Described by some journalists as a “mini-manifesto”, it was a 64-page uncosted wishlist of vague feelgood notions like reducing child poverty. (A brave, daring and controversial step there to be sure.) And this time the papers were all over it.

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…to normal service since yesterday afternoon, which was the result of Unionist sabotage from a fifth columnist lurking in the ranks of the Separats. We now have a new ADSL cable (PC World didn’t open until 11am) and we’ll be with you very shortly.

The traitor has been harshly dealt with.

We think this picture makes further comment unnecessary.

Alert readers will know that one of this site’s key themes for the last several months has been examining the true meaning of Labour’s pledge to “pool and share resources” within the UK if Scotland votes No – pointing out that as Scotland is one of the wealthiest parts of the UK due to its oil resources, “pooling and sharing” means diverting more Scottish money to poor parts of England and Wales.

(Northern Ireland already gets the biggest share of UK spending.)

And those same readers will also have noted our ongoing puzzlement at the continued failure of any Scottish reporters or broadcasters to question Labour on that point. But is it possible to solve this unfathomable mystery?

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We’ve been taking the mickey out of Labour a lot in the last couple of days, which has been thoroughly merited and done with serious intent, but we thought it’d be nice to finish the week with something a bit more positive. Those of you who follow our Twitter account may have seen it already, but if not it’s well worth taking some time out for.

It’s a speech made at a Yes Scotland meeting in Lockerbie by Mark Frankland, who alert readers will recall from his appearance on this site last year, and it pretty much speaks for itself. Get this man on more stages.