This wasn’t online when we wrote this morning’s piece, but it is now:
These are organisations Labour should surely be on the right side of.”
(“Record View”, the Daily Record, 8 Jan 2014.)
When we commissioned our second Panelbase poll, we asked Edinburgh University’s highly respected Professor of Public Policy, Politics and International Relations, James Mitchell, to give our questions the once-over beforehand to ensure they weren’t unfair or leading. The resulting poll’s neutrality was widely praised.
We thought it might therefore be interesting to get his expert professional opinion on the recent “Better Together” poll by YouGov, and he very kindly obliged.
Yesterday the Labour Party’s representatives in the Scottish Parliament voted against a motion to provide free school meals to all Scottish children in Primary 1 to Primary 3, and to increase childcare funding for two-year-olds. They did so barely 48 hours after angrily demanding that the Scottish Government provide better childcare – an issue which Labour had explicitly tied into the independence debate by using an opinion poll commissioned by the “Better Together” campaign.
Fortunately for Scots, Labour is a totally impotent force in the Scottish Parliament, and its opinions and actions there ultimately count for nothing. Thanks to the SNP’s majority, the motion passed and hungry children living in poverty will get at least one hot, nutritious meal a day, without the stigma of being marked out as poor.
But after the blanket media coverage of Labour’s calls over child welfare, you’d expect that the arithmetic of the vote would merit at least a passing mention when Scotland’s press reported the story. Wouldn’t you?
The true meaning of “Better Together”.
Now that’s what we call Project Fear.
It should come as a surprise to nobody that yet another senior Labour figure has come out for independence. It’s more of a surprise that anyone should be surprised.
Much of the credit for that must go to the “Better Together” campaign, who with the extensive help of the Scottish media have done an excellent job of portraying the independence campaign as an SNP-only obsession. Yet that picture belies the real benefits that independence can bring the Labour Party in Scotland.
We’re starting to think that we might need to see a medical professional, readers. Things keep happening that we have no recollection of whatsoever. First there was this (still-unsolved) mystery yesterday, and now there’s this:
Wait, what?
It’s only January 6, but the 2014 satire bar just got set pretty high:
It’s our own fault for reading a Brian Monteith column in the Scotsman, but:
Hang on – Alex Salmond did what now? As far as we know, if you’re on the Scottish electoral register you get a vote in the referendum. What happened? Which “tens of thousands of people” are we talking about here? Shouldn’t this have been in the news or something? We hate trying to catch up after the holidays.
We were as perplexed as anyone by the bizarre YouGov poll commissioned by “Better Together” and released today, which reveals that the status quo they’re so strenuously campaigning for is the least popular constitutional option among Scots. As there’s no “more powers” option on the referendum ballot paper, and the official No campaign can neither define any such option nor pledge to implement one, it’s hard to understand what they get from asking a three-choice question about a two-choice vote.
Indeed, the survey’s result – 32% “more devolution”, 30% independence, 29% status quo – actually gives a higher Yes figure than some recent two-option polls. So what on Earth can the No camp be thinking?
It’s one of the weirder aspects of the independence debate that the No campaign constantly shrieks about how an independent Scotland might run a deficit, as if that was some sort of unusual and terrifying state unique to Scotland. So we thought it might be handy to keep this clip from today’s BBC Breakfast here for future reference.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
