Scottish Labour For Dummies 2015
In the light of the announcement of Scottish Labour’s new chief of staff, we thought it might be worthwhile to summarise some of his views in one handy reference guide, for the benefit of left-wing Labour voters who may have voted Yes in the referendum but are now considering whether to return to the party this May.
John McTernan, revealed today as the right-hand man of Scottish leader Jim Murphy:
– Wants to send British troops back to Iraq
– Thinks Scotland is a “mendicant (beggar) nation”
– And that Scots are “narrow, Presbyterian and racist”
– Said “a Tory revival would be good for Scotland”
– And that “Labour is not a socialist party”
– Insists that “privatisation is good for the NHS”
– And that “liberal whingers are wrong – we should shut our libraries”
– And that the living wage would be “a disaster for jobs”
– And thinks charging students tuition fees is “a no-brainer”
– Reckons “Labour didn’t go nearly far enough” when courting the markets and big companies like Tesco
– Claims the UK subsidises Scotland by £10-20bn a year
– Believes that “nuclear deterrence is socialist”
– And that Labour would have done “much better” if it “had never flirted with pacifism/unilateralism”
– But claims to be an “internationalist”
– Predicted “a convincing victory” for Labour three months before the 2011 Holyrood election
– Really, really loves Jim Murphy
As chief of staff, it seems reasonable to assume his appointment reflects policy.
Good luck, Labour voters.
Did his client in Australia, Julia Gillard, not lose her election? Looks as if McTernan is not so infallible.
Thanks Rev,
Really looking forward to using this campaign resource in Edinburgh South West should McTernan be standing in what was Darling’s seat.
Cannae wait.
Labour is truly fukced up.
I thought it was Major that privatised the railways.
@Jon D.
Yep. Use his own negative campaigning against him.
Thank you rev a handy ‘go to’ guide to Slab.
Christ where to start
Red Tory spin doctor “Insists that “privatisation is good for the NHS”
link to ft.com
Catastrophic NHS sell off failure getting soft soaped by Tory Boy media, in particular the BBC, but its a monumental failure all the same and who kicked it all off?
FFS what a puss!!!
“liberal whingers are wrong – we should shut our libraries”
Maybe he meant to say “we should shut our Liberals”?
Does McTernan genuinely think he’s a socialist, incidentally? He can’t be that delusional, surely?
“Really really loves Jim Murphy” Come on Rev, wa dizna love Jim Murphy?
Honestly if people are thick enough to vote for these bastards by a majority this May I’m gettin the fick oot o here.
Link for : And that Scots are “narrow, Presbyterian and racist” leads to an error 404 page
Wow,you are a fast worker Rev.
This is dynamite for getting the message out to Labour voters.
I still think Murphy is a very dangerous man and with the addition of McTwit it should heighten the alert levels even further. No complacency folks!
Another strong member and i have used that word on purpose
of the Scottish red tory party!
Keep calm the SNP landslide is nearly here!!!
a willingness to embrace what the voters wanted, including working in the national interest where necessary.
This is a quotation from Mr McTernan’s article in which he predicted that Labour would win convincingly in the 2011 Holyrood election. This is quite an admission. The Labour Party is willing to work in the national interest on occasion and only as a sop to voters.
Didn’t he also say that ‘Labour is not a socialist party’?
Disgraceful. I am neither prebyterian nor racist.
For those who have not read this from the Wee Ginger Dug Enjoy.
link to weegingerdug.wordpress.com
They just keep digging a deeper hole.
Magic! 😀
“And that Scots are “narrow, Presbyterian and racist” leads to an error 404 page”
NO IT DOESN’T.
So far the concern is that he will get away with this reactionary nonsense, because Murphy has in no way been held to account by the MSM, despite being given endless tv coverage. Mad Jim rants on unchallenged, by no one, it would seem.
Does it really matter what he thinks? He is obviously good at his job and will increase Eggo Murphy’s effectiveness. This is not good news for us……
Just a wee aside here but I was wondering if our latest *ahem* hero destined to *cough* save Labour in Scotland has been interviewed by Police Scotland yet? 😉
I only ask because his partner in crime, a certain wee Ruthie Davidson, has been interviewed twice over her claims of counting the postal votes during the referendum. A few days prior to wee Ruthie’s claim our *ahem* hero made the exact same claim on the Daily Politics show.
Fanny
The New Labour Party:
Party electoral manifestos have not contained the term socialism since 1992. The new version of Clause IV, although still affirming a commitment to democratic socialism, no longer mention the public ownership of industry: In its place it advocates “the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition” with “high quality public services” not necessarily themselves in the public sector.
Martin Sinclair – ‘Link for : And that Scots are “narrow, Presbyterian and racist” leads to an error 404 page.’ It’s working OK for me, give it another try. 😉
Piece of useless shoit
OK, let’s join the dots here.
Nuclear deterrence is socialist.
Labour is not a socialist party.
Ergo, really looking forward to the announcement scrapping/not renewing Trident!!
Oh wait, this is Labour isn’t it?
Alternative photo caption “only been here a day and that fat bastard McDougall’s already ate all ma pieces”
Narrow? Unlike Jim Murphy, who is wide as the Clyde.
Everything McTernan touches turns tae keech.
C’mon, John. Let’s see a hands-on approach in your new association with labour’s northern branch office.
Can we sum it up and say he’s a…
[fill in the missing word]
🙂
Westminster illegal wars, tax evasion, banking fraud, expense account fraud, secrecy and lies. Costing £Billions. Labour/Unionists can’t and don’t count.
The fleas which sat on the elephant’s back, bold as brass, still believe that shaking the bridge was a team effort.
They’re problem is they took Scottish votes for granted, ignoring Scottish opinion. They even fielded a faux organisation called Scottish Labour which pretended to have autonomy and a different agenda from London, just in case some of their Scottish voters actually looked at their policies.
In reality their real focus was capturing Middle England.
The truth has now reached around half of their voters in Scotland and they have moved on. Excellent.
Now we need to get the truth through to the other half!
Lets send this filthy Labour Party garbage back to London.
Say ‘No’ to The Red Tory Traitors – Vote SNP.
What worries me about Labour moving further and further to the right like this is that they will inevitably take some folk with them. If that happens in significant enough numbers then we’re royally fucked. So let’s hope May 2015 is the end of them. They are boyond repair. Rotten to the core.
copy list and mailshot every household Edinburgh seat hes standing
Is there enough space on Murphy’s right hand side for McTernan to fit?
I note a John McTiernan directed “Die Hard : With a Vengeance” and “The Hunt for Red October”…a tale of a group of socialists heading towards the rampant heart of capitalism…
Small world!
@Martin Sinclair.
Alert reader award.
🙂
McTernan’s Wiki entry and other biographical stuff doesn’t seem to make much of the fact that he was a councillor in London’s Southwark Borough (in 1986 and 1990, if the following link is accurate, and is referring to the same John McTernan. Scroll down to near-end to see his name in list of nominees.)
Only reason I checked it is because I have, in front of me, an old copy of Edinburgh Review (No. 73, 1986) in which McTernan had an essay entitled ‘A story of education’ (sic) – in it he lays out some heart-warming reminiscences and hard-boiled pre-Blairite pragmatism, even as the Poll Tax was thundering down the tracks. Unfortunately, no online version seems accessible, and it’s not interesting enough to warrant transcription. The brief biographical note at the back of the volume: ‘John McTernan was educated entirely in Edinburgh and is currently a councillor in the London Borough of Southwark.’
link to moderngov.southwark.gov.uk
A thug with incurable acne … of the mind.
@ r esquierdo 2:07pm
Fanny.
Yeah I’ll second that.
[…] Scottish Labour For Dummies 2015 […]
[…] In the light of the announcement of Scottish Labour’s new chief of staff, we thought it might be worthwhile to summarise some of his views in one handy reference guide, for the benefit of left-wing Labour voters who may have voted Yes in the referendum but are now considering whether to return to the party this May. […]
P.S.
Forgot to point out that the Southwark neighbourhood McTernan represented was – quelle surprise – Bellenden.
Great news. New Labour has reformed and is now doing gigs in Scotland.
Coming to a venue near you are the new line up of “Jim and the Jimadists” featuring all your favourite New Labour sound bites and policies from the past.
Book early to avoid disappointment.
“There is no electoral victory available by moving to the Left of the Labour Party (from other thread, relevant here)
I suspect he is right. England has, consistently over the last third of a century, favoured right of centre politics. It’s getting worse with UKIP and the others trying to race them to the bottom of the gutter. Thatcher and Blair were re-elected when anyone seeking fairness and social justice should have rejected them England didn’t.
The typical London Labour agenda now overlaps just too readily with Stu’s McTernan list above!
Most Scots, including a lot of No voters, think quite differently.
McTernan is a gift LOL
The views of McTernan terrify me somewhat. I wouldn’t want to vote for a party associated with such a person, never mind taking advice from them.
Strikes me as belonging to the overly masculine, aggressive and violent tone of politics that turns female voters off big style
Did he shave off a wee square moustache before the photo was taken.
Oh please, please, let John McTernan loose on the Scottish people!! The joy to hear McTernan’s wisdom as he ‘preaches’ to the Scottish nation will not only be educational, but he could be the man to heal the so-called ‘rift’ that apparently rages between the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps post referendum (as the Unionist MSP’s keep on telling us).
I’m sure once John gets into full gear, and enlightens us on our foolishness, bitterness, greediness and ungratefulness, that it will surely unite us as unified nation again. We’re all dying to be told; Nationalist or Unionist …that we are a nation of ungrateful and despicable people. So, a big thanks to Jim Murphy for hiring ‘Mr Positivity himself’
“Labour is not a socialist party”, he’s got that right.
Good god, – What an awful person that J Mc is!!
For some reason McTernan reminds me of J Edgar Hoover, who allegedly hated socialism so much he would never make ‘left turns’ when driving his car.
We went to local SNP hustings last week to vote on the GE candidate for East Renfrewshire. All the candidates were asked how they would respond t’other expected dirty tactics from JM s team. (Even if Murphy himself doesn’t stand his whole team will focus on this prime seat.) I really hope one of the responses from SNP will be to showcase the utterances of Jim’s new right hand man! Will do half the work for us!
This guy has got a face you would never tire of punching. Ugly inside and out.
@Ian Brotherhood
The reason McTernan’s Wiki entry doesnt reflect that is that someone seems to keep deleting such info from older versions of the entry. I wonder who would do that and what party they might be a member of? 😀
This week saw candidate hustings for Ayr, Carrick and Cummnock. The Cumnock event was in the town hall which meant that all involved had to pass the bust of Keir Hardie, prominently situated just outside the front door.
Even before Mr. McTernan`s appointment Keir Hardie would have felt more at home inside the meeting than at any team Murphy gathering.
Keir Hardie died in 1915, he cannot be resting in peace.
As pointed out previously. McTernan and Murphy always come across as calm and gentle on TV, reasonable even! That’s because they don’t get asked any questions which may upset them. McTernan is a monster away from TV. His twitter posts are outragous bigoted anti Scottish tirades. Murphy can’t handle real debate in the street as he just loses the plot and starts shouting.
So the media will continue the charade in 2015!
He looks like he could be a character from Burnistoun.
Jolly Boy Cockroach
Somethings afoot. Murphy AND McTiernan!
And a cute puppy, Dugdale, “seems a nice wee lassie’ for the auld yins.
His appointment is logical. Appoint a tory to assist a tory.
Thatcher didn’t privatise the railways. She didn’t dare. It was “nice” John Major who did that one.
Westminster moving rightwards, one government at a time. . .
From WOS twitter via Iain Dale (LBC):
‘Some Nat idiot in Scotland is going round branches of @Waterstones putting Katie Price books inside the cover of @Alan_Cochrane’s book!’ – Oh, I soo hope it’s a Winger doing this, but kudos to whomsoever it is. 😉 😉
(Or maybe it’s Katie Price’s publisher).
I think the Project Fear Boys think they actually won the referendum. Well, from 70% NO in early 2013 down to 55% in September 2014 (and still, I believe, falling), they almost lost it.
Let’s see how Project Fear 2 gets on from a much lower base (Labour currently below 30%, those against devo max below 30%). Last time, they had to hold the line, and they did barely enough. This time, they actually have to do something to win. This will be very interesting.
From the ‘mendicant nation’ link, according to John “Tory governments mollycoddled the Scots, out of fear of unpopularity”.
I presume he means Thatcher (writing as he was in 2011). Christ – if that was molly coddling I wouldnae like to see what Mrs T would have done if she was treating us fairly – extermination camps perhaps John?
Team McTernan/Murphy sounds as though it can do for Labour in Scotland what Team Ingham/Thatcher once accomplished for Tories.
Total wipeout anyone?
John ‘Zyklon B’ McTernan.
“And still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew. Oliver Goldsmith, 1770.
link to spenserians.cath.vt.edu
The issue is how to engage with labour and returning yes voters to labour at #ge2015 without it descending into tribal warfare.
I worry that these 2 right wingers are going to play very nasty and that the opportunity that #ge2015 represents for the people of Scotland gets forgotten.
Yes we need to expose them but must never lose key objective of returning as many SNP MPs this may as possible.
Peace
Can I suggest Alistair Campbell comes out of retirement to join the team? What about Mandy? What about Andy Coulson while we are at it – since being a tory is no longer a hindrence?
The Scottish branch of the Labour branch of the Westminster party are in deep trouble and just like the indyref the only place they will turn is the dark arts of spin and smear which is McTernan’s area.
In a normal country with a free press he would be a total liability but in Scotland the quotes above will not be printed. Not an unexpected appointment – I thought he was on board already.
This is exactly the kind of profile of all of these red Torie’s that should be compiled in order to deliver through letter boxes.
Unless we start to let the voting public know they will never find out about this scum and his ilk. We have got to take it to them.
Now what was the name of those series of films by Michael Winner with Charles Bronson in the lead role ??
Now surely this is another potential National exposè??
If not, why not?
This man is a direct threat to Scotland as a country in many respects.
Its the three stooges ! Three of the most patronising, bile and shite mongers to walk the planet. They dont represent anyone but themselves and their like.Socialists my arse.
Nice pic of the ("Tractor" - Ed)ous red tory rat Rev.Stu. Any chance of seeing the one where he’s on the train with the war criminal Blair?
No offence to rats of course;-)
Doesn’t surprise me that he was involved in trying to stop the referendum and is over friendly with Jim Murphy. Wasn’t Jim Murphy named on a document released by Wikileaks compiled by a senior member of staff at the US embassy in London that said Jim Murphy was in charge of some shady group of unionist party members whos sole purpose was to try and block the referendum?
I’ll bet John McTernan was right beside him the whole time.
I’m beginning to think that Jim Murphy is working for the SNP. Is there no end to his stupidity?
Alex Birnie says
“Does it really matter what he thinks? He is obviously good at his job and will increase Eggo Murphy’s effectiveness. This is not good news for us…”
Bollocks
If you count costing Julia Gillard her job as being good at his own, bring it on I say, the mans a fucking liability!
link to abc.net.au
Someone above said something like “it is bad for us (meaning SNP) because McTernan is good at his job”. The truth is that McTernan is a serial failure at his job. The only time he was ever involved in election campaigns which won were the Blair campaigns which were over 10 years ago and his roles then were very minor. Since then everything McTernan has touched has turned to ashes culminating in him “being run out of Oz on a rail”, to coin the old Western phrase, before someone murdered him.
He is a disaster. Every forecast he has made about anything has turned out wrong. By appointing McTernan, Murphy shows how stupid and out of touch with reality he really is.
Everyone has good days and bad days too.
For me this is a good day, not so good I fear for Mr Murphy.
Those that are concerned about Project Fear II coming down the line, personally I’m not worried. The ammunition supplied by Murphy and McTernan will give us another 30% of the Labour vote and I hope all those that never voted in 2014 will get into the booths this year.
All we need now is McTernan or Murphy on the BBC everyday. That should do it.
@Wullie 2:58
Meant to say. Brill!
That’s some list, this Jay-Make-Tea really loves Scotland, not.
Perhaps now, readers of this website who are considering voting Labour this coming May will have a change of heart (and head).
If Labour voters are so disgusted by their party (but can’t find it in themselves to vote for an alternative), maybe they should do the decent thing and form an Election Abstain Pact (a bit like the way their politicians abstain from voting on important issues that affect Scotland). Get it started on social media and let your voices be heard.
So, when asked post GE2015 how you voted, you can at least hold up your head high and proud and say, “On this occasion I didn’t vote for Labour”. Even then, at the eleventh hour you may decide to vote for a pro-Scottish candidate.
Go on, take the LEAP.. we’ve got this One Opportunity to make a real difference!
@John King
Well said.
Rev never mind a second WBB. Just do a wee Red Book starring Murphy and McTernan and all the things they have said in the past.
Expose them for the Tories that they are, must be worth 10% to the SNP vote.
Oh dear. Now I expect the Labour election campaign to get down below sewer level, the same level the Australian Labour party went with him in charge of communications. 🙁
McTernan always comes across on TV interviews as an arrogant but bitter and twisted man. Most people I know dislike him instantly.
Ian Brotherhood says
“Forgot to point out that the Southwark neighbourhood McTernan represented was – quelle surprise – Bellenden.”
Snort,
Did they have a coming home party for one of their favorite sons?
gordoz says:
Now what was the name of those series of films by Michael Winner with Charles Bronson in the lead role ??
Death Wish..think there was one,two and three, Keiza Murphy and now McTernan! Labour must have one putting these three monkeys in charge of getting voters in Scotland on their side.
Well if you are going to run a campaign of lies and innuendo,this is the man to pick. Going to print this off for when i knock on doors.
@galamcennalath says: 9 January, 2015 at 2:46 pm
“There is no electoral victory available by moving to the Left of the Labour Party”
I read that on the earlier thread and shook my head. It just illustrates that they care nothing about the electorate, they have no real policies and will lie and cheat just to achieve the goal of sitting at the trough in Westminster.
Their manifesto will be an IOU that they’ll just tear up once they get what they want. Similar to the ‘vow’.
Quote:- “The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put make-up on two faces – Maureen Murphy” Do you think she’s related to Jim? 🙂
Joemcg @ 3.46
DUDE!
A fine piece of work, Rev. This disagreeable man only has to open his mouth or take up his lap top to disgust all those who are not tribal Labour voters. As Labour languish at between 24% and 30% in Scottish opinion polls, one might think Jim Murphy would be attempting to win back those who’d deserted “the people’s party” rather than drive them further away.
o/t
French police don’t mess around. 2 hostage incidents were bound to end in the deaths of the suspects. Don’t hold out much hope for any hostages though. Terrible events.
“As chief of staff, it seems reasonable to assume his appointment reflects policy.
Aye, that about sums it up in a nutshell. A neocon campaigning for a neocon.
@Capella
No, Gillard, if you remember was knifed by her predecessor just before the election. So it was Rudd who lost the election, not Gillard.
I think Murphy has brought in McTernan because so far all his utterances have backfired.
McTernan is a nasty dangerous individual – he got parachuted into Oz to be Julia Guillards ‘adviser’, That would have taken someone with influence as it ‘bent’ Oz labour laws.
The only reason this could succeed is due to the supine BBC/MSM.
Gosh, that is some list.
I wonder why all the fuss about what Craig Murray had said.
@ghillie, re; M Mc Mc
How about the three *ahem* ego’s?
Very kind to animals, though. Apparently he sticks the nut in whippets before biting their heids aff.
Sandy Thompson says
“I’m beginning to think that Jim Murphy is working for the SNP. Is there no end to his stupidity?”
I wondered that as well,
but I came to the conclusion that Murphy is so arrogant that he sails as close to the wind as he dares without capsizing his party to show just how much crap he can feed the Scottish public and they’ll still swallow it,
I would be willing to bet he has a bet of his own with his cohorts to see just how far he can go and still not be called on it by the media.
This has gone way beyond being a laughing matter and is starting to show that the democratic process is being destroyed by people who see it as one big joke.
Murphy clearly believes a rerun of Project Fear will be successful in May at the General Election. However, there are at least 3 reasons why it can’t work so well.
1. The GE is not an either/or situation. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are not going to align themselves with Labour.
2. They can’t play on fear of the unknown, because the known consequences of the election (more austerity, be it Red or Blue) are unpalatable. The Unknown – what happens if Scotland actually sends a big chunk of SNP MPs to Westminster – is more palatable.
3. The most successful cards Project Fear were able to play – currency and pensions – simply don’t figure in the General Election in the same way.
By the way, see that picture at the top – is that no’ Tam Mullen fae Still Game?
Dobber
Unfortunately for us the B.B.C. will love this fella, and the Labour contacts within the B.B.C., (and not just in Scotland), will make sure he gets a regular spot on any political programme, the S.N.P. and the wider “yes” folks are going to have to be “on their toes”, to counter his lies, and lies a plenty there will be, he plays for keeps!, nasty nasty man.
“Grouse Beater says:
9 January, 2015 at 2:37 pm
A thug with incurable acne … of the mind.”
Does that mean that his memory is a bit spotty?
The McSpreaders – fertilising a Labour Party near you.
Someone has to ask #ScotlandsCleverestMan if privatisation really is good for the NHS….
link to bbc.co.uk
He has nothing to do with being on the left, social justice and anything else ordinary members stand for. He is purely about power, getting and keeping power with no thought about how it should be used.
I despair. Really I just despair. What in the name of the wee man has Labour stooped to?
It’s no wonder he thinks Scots are narrow, Presbyterian and racist, he spent the last two and a half years in the No Campaign, where 75% of its activists were members of the ludge. Same ludge that gave his party a punt into the council in Glasgow a few years after helping them out in Glenrothes.
He is just another bitter twisted chancer. He’s in the last chance saloon here. Seems like nobody wants him and he’s decided to come and share his ‘wisdom’ with us. With our corrupt media it would seem to me the only way to undermine individuals like this is to challenge them in public. The facade of respectability would soon crumble (it’s already happened numerous times). Same with the ‘prodigal son’ – as seen in a photograph in another thread. It’s quite easy to ‘push the buttons’ of individuals like this, they all share the same narcissistic personality traits and thrive on attention, good or bad. But they can’t handle sustained, reasonable, open intellectual challenge. How we would go about this is another matter…. Phew, no swearing! FFS, oh shit 🙂
In short, a pretty miserable excuse for human being.
Someone tell me when this is front page news in The National and The Sunday Herald.
A miserable looking insect. You can just tell that he hates (1) Scotland and (2) the Scottish people.
If you really think about it. If we had to surrender any more of our civil liberties to the authorities then the only step they could make to erode them further would be to pass a law which allowed them to search our homes at random without a warrant. That’s all they could do as that’s all that’s left.
We’re all fucked.
Mostly well sourced blog post and representing the sources accurately, as usual. McTernan is some piece of work. I’d cut out the bit about him “deliberately starting a race riot” in Australia though. Australian PM Tony Abbot is a hard right neo-conservative and while i don’t know whether he actually said it or not, i wouldn’t be even slightly surprised if he had said that the aboriginal embassy should be torn down.
and if you read the articles you linked to, even if abbot was telling the truth (which with Abbott is not certain) the guy responsible was a Tony Hodges who worked for McTernan, not McTernan himself, as lamentable a character as he is.
Mutley – yep Major privatised the railways, not Thatcher
Wait a minute
“labour is not a socialist party”
And
“nuclear deterrence is socialist”
They can’t do one without being the other then!
WHY WHY WHY does everybody keep saying
keir hardie will be spinning in his grave
he was burnt to toaste in 1915 in the first cremation in scotland
he was burnt at lambhill and in attendence was one of the pankhursts sisters lambhill was the first cemetery to build a crematorium in scotland in fact i think it was the first in the world so mr hardie won;t be spinning in his grave he will be shitting flames and burning bridges between himself and this shower of fuckwits trying to pretend they are the labour party
next time im up at lambhill i will look for the plaque and photo grab a shot
Jon D
My information,from an impeccable source, is that McTernan was never seriously in the running for the Edinburgh South West Constituency and that the story of his ‘interest’ was a bit of kite flying by the Edinburgh Evening News.
There are about a dozen names in to succeed the incumbent, probable favourites Edinburgh councillors Norma Austin Hart and Ricky Henderson.
[…] We’ve had some fun with the appointment of John McTernan as Scottish Labour’s new chief of staff this week. But he’s far from the only talent in branch manager Jim Murphy’s backroom team. Particularly alert readers may recall an obscure figure from the independence campaign by the name of Blair McDougall, who was little-seen in the last year of the debate but we think was the director of “Better Together”. […]
bald eagle,
“keir hardie will be spinning in his grave
he was burnt to toaste in 1915 in the first cremation in scotland”
Interesting information. Maybe he forsaw what was to become of the party he had founded.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of McTernan’s views, and he did work on Australian Labor’s victorious 2007 campaign and for Blair and backed the No campaign so was associated with some election winners, new data from the British Election Survey shows the average Scot places themselves at 4.4 on a left to right scale, Labour is slightly closer to them at 4.1 and the SNP further left at 3.9, so there is no future for Scottish Labour in moving further left
link to britishelectionstudy.com
For information, Scottish Parliament confirmed that Kezia Dugdale ?is the MSP designated as the ‘qualifying party leader’ of the Labour party represented at Holyrood.
Ms Dugdale will receive the party leader allowances.
link to scottish.parliament.uk
[…] from right wing parties, particularly the Tories. I wouldn’t hire a man who calls Scotland a nation of racist beggars and believes in privatisation, public cuts and nuclear weapons in a bid to…. I would not spend all of the time attacking a left wing party and opposing all of their left wing […]
HYUFD – Well that scale is very badly put together than and it’s conclusions meaningless, given that the polls show 60 – 80% majorities in both Scotland and the UK for e.g renationalising the railways and the energy companies, policies to the left of all the main parties including Labour and the SNP.
link to yougov.co.uk
At best your scale shows that most people think the parties are considerably further left in their policies than they actually are.
Polls even in Scotland also show support for welfare cuts, immigration controls and the death penalty, depends which poll you look at. Even Peter Hitchens wants to renationalise the railways, as they were throughout the Thatcher years, so that is not actually that left-wing
Even 52% of Conservative voters want them both renationalised
It’s left-wing compared to the policies of any of the big UK or Scottish parties, none of which have a policy of renationalising either.
And what you say on views on immigration and welfare is true, but with welfare cuts again many people back it because the big party leaders and the tabloids have given them a wildly inaccurate view of how much is spent on benefits and how much benefit fraud there is. Ditto for immigration.
e.g BBC reported “Asked to estimate the proportion of foreign-born people living in the UK, the average guess is 29.4%. The true figure according to OECD data is 10.8%, lower than Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada and the USA. When informed of that, the proportion of British respondents thinking it was “too many” fell from 59% to 46%”
If most people knew the facts about welfare and immigration, and what the actual policies of the parties they vote for is, they would likely vote Green or not vote at all.
The Greens policy is to renationalise. Certainly on benefits most at least support the £26,000 benefits cap so noone earns more on benefits than the average family, most would also support a more contributory approach to welfare.
On immigration while most do not want no immigration, they do want benefit restrictions for new immigrants and an Australian-style points system so we focus on the immigrants we most need.
As for the Greens, some of their policies like renationalisation and wealth taxes for the rich are popular, others like increased parking charges, ‘meat free Mondays’ and higher fuel bills rather less so
Scottish Labour looks like NDP/ Québec Solidaire in Québec!