Wings Over Scotland

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, 2 July 2013:

“The only place to cement social change is in the hearts and minds of voters. Blair and Brown were defeatists, convinced Britain was essentially conservative, individualist, imbued with Thatcherism.

Confronted with the Mail, Sun, Times and Telegraph, the culture looked immutable, a force to be appeased. Not even when ordinary living standards plummeted as banks were bailed out did Labour seize the chance to make a stronger social democratic case.

Ideas matter. Had Labour changed the political climate (as Cameron briefly thought), this government could not dismantle the social state. But like tumbleweed, Labour policies put down no roots to anchor ideas of collective provision and social protection.”

In the full article, Toynbee rather glosses over some of Labour’s failings in power in her eagerness to present a rosy picture of 13 years in which inequality grew almost constantly. But the paragraphs above concisely and surgically extract the heart of the party’s betrayal of not only its own voters, but the whole concept of British democracy – and inadvertently also the reason why it won’t win the 2015 election.

The only mistake Toynbee makes is to imagine that it matters.

London-born, Los Angeles-resident singer Rod Stewart in today’s Scottish Sun:

“Proud Scotland fan Rod Stewart revealed he’d hate to see the break-up of the Union. Rock idol Rod, 68, hopes Scots will snub independence by rallying behind the ‘No’ push in next year’s referendum.

But the veteran singer fears many young voters could be swayed to say ‘Yes’ because of stirring Mel Gibson blockbuster Braveheart.

Rod, whose dad Robert was from Leith, Edinburgh, said: “I’d hate to see the Union broken after all these years — and I don’t think it will happen.”

(We note with passing interest and without comment the paper’s own description of Rod as a “Scotland fan” rather than a “Scot”, and that a few lines later in the same piece he says “as I don’t live there I shouldn’t comment on independence”. Whoops!)

Hmm, what could have brought that on all of a sudden?

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If you ever want to make a Labour activist in Scotland uncomfortable and desperate to change the subject, there’s always been an easy way to do it in a single sentence:

“If the Tories are as bad as you say, why is it better for Scotland to be governed by them for six years out of every ten, even though we never vote for them?”

We’ve been asking that one for years now and never had an answer, for the very good reason that there is only one honest reply – one “Scottish Labour” can never admit.

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Yesterday the No campaign’s Rob Murray responded to allegations of scaremongering by complaining on Twitter that supporters of independence “don’t like debate”.

For some unknown reason he didn’t reply to our observation that “Better Together” has banned hundreds of would-be debaters from its Facebook page for politely raising various awkward issues about “Project Fear”, but later the same day rather more disturbing news reached us of some events in the north of Scotland.

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When even the deputy leader of the Scottish Tories complains that the fear-based arguments of the No campaign are getting “silly”, the more optimistic observer might be forgiven for hoping for at least a superficial temporary change in their tone, particularly in the light of the especially bad example which triggered the comments.

You’d think the more optimistic observer would have learned by now, eh?

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While browsing the Trade Unionists For Independence page earlier today, a story from the website of SNP Paisley MSP George Adam caught our eye. We’re unable to verify its claims, but since that wasn’t a problem for the entire UK media over Susan Calman, we offer it as an item of interest anyway. We might just give William Hill and Coral a ring tomorrow and check it out for ourselves.

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A couple of weeks ago we went to the rather excellent “Propaganda – Power And Persuasion” exhibition at the British Library in London. If that’s a bit too much of a trek for you, the book only costs £4 more than entry to the exhibition and contains a large proportion of the content. Sadly, though, it misses the single best exhibit.

The piece in question is a small, scruffy hand-written piece of paper on which press baron Viscount Northcliffe had scribbled half-a-dozen cardinal rules of propaganda – as part of his work in that role during World War 1 –  in terms so clear and concise it took our breath away. Photography was banned at the show, and the lines were so good we may yet have to go back and pay another nine quid in order to copy them down.

We’re pretty sure Scotland on Sunday’s Euan McColm has read them, though.

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Things must be grim at Project Fear HQ if things have gotten this desperate and amateurish 15 months out. The latest speculative FearBomb is that “mobile phone companies could introduce roaming charges when people cross over the border.”

(Coupled, rather excellently, with the assertion that “Scottish independence could also drive up the cost of posting letters”, apparently under the impression that we’ve all forgotten the price of a stamp in the UK rocketing by a eye-watering 39% last year.)

We all love our mobile phones, so that would be an excellent piece of scarework – if only it was more than a fortnight since the EU announced that roaming charges are to be abolished in Europe by July 2014, two months before the independence referendum and almost two years before Scotland would actually be independent.

Come on, guys, it’s like you’re not even trying any more.

There’s a rather odd opinion column by Des Clarke in the Daily Record today. Entitled “Let’s be proud Scots and get our own proper version of America’s Independence Day”, readers might reasonably assume it had something to do with, well, independence.

Instead, the 500-word piece talks about pretty much anything else. Des, a DJ for London-based radio network Capital FM, throws out an almost-complete bingo card of Scottish stereotypes – kilts, Jimmy hats, deep-frying, Buckfast, it’s all there – while bemoaning the lack of a Scottish national holiday like the one the Americans have every July 4th to celebrate winning their independence from the UK.

But impressively, he manages to make not a single reference, even obliquely, to the fact the Scotland is going to be actually voting on independence next year, which one might imagine would provide the perfect excuse for just such an annual shindig.

We’re not saying it’s sinister. It’s just a bit weird.

On the rare occasions when we can briefly drag ourselves away from the Wings Over Scotland coalface and the brutal, unforgiving lash of our slavedriver readers, we enjoy a social game of poker. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from poker, it’s that shuffling a terrible hand doesn’t magically transform it into a good one. We’ve tried.

So we suspect the SNP will be rather less than quaking in their boots at today’s news that Labour have decided to reunite the dream team of Johann Lamont and Iain Gray that was such a resounding success when they were the party’s leader and deputy leader (not in that order) in 2011.

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We might have to make this a regular mirror strand to “Quoted for truth”. We’re struggling to get our heads round a particularly dim-witted piece in today’s Scotsman by Gregor Gall, a left-wing academic who the paper notes is “professor of industrial relations at the University of Bradford and lives in Edinburgh”. (Tough commute.)

It’s full of all manner of illogical cobblers (we have a feeling that we saw The Illogical Cobblers supporting Birdland at the Edinburgh Venue in about 1989, but that’s another story), from which one passage really leaps out with its underpants on its head.

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Johann Lamont (we think) at today’s FMQs:

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