Because, astonishing as it might seem in the circumstances, Ruth Davidson actually genuinely tried to get away with this at First Minister’s Questions yesterday:
They really do think we won’t remember, readers.
Kezia Dugdale isn’t even trying to make our life difficult.
“I don’t think Jeremy can unite our party and lead us into government. He cannot appeal to a broad enough section of voters to win an election.” (22 August 2016)
“I believe that Jeremy can unite the Labour Party [and] win a general election.” (24 September 2016)
We’re sure that the media will pin Dugdale down over this weekend and we’ll get a detailed and convincing explanation of exactly what it is that she thinks changed about the fundamental nature of Jeremy Corbyn over that solitary month.
Eternally angry Conservative MSP Adam Tomkins has been even shoutier than usual this week, purple-faced with rage about the fact that the SNP has decided to spend some of its own money (not taxpayer cash) asking people for their opinions.
It’s a curious argument from a member of a party that’s been rejected in successive elections in Scotland in 1964, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1974 again, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2016, but keeps turning up and barking orders anyway. You’d think the first 50 years might qualify as a hint.
We’ll just leave this here:
Actual percentage of female MSPs returned in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election:
Labour 46%, SNP 43%, Conservative 19%, Green 16%, Lib Dem 0%.
Hmm.
A few weeks ago we rather cruelly highlighted an old post from Kezia Dugdale’s blog in which she bitterly bemoaned the practice of candidates who’d been rejected by voters in constituency seats still being able to get into Parliament via the “back door” of the regional lists.
Angrily Dugdale raged:
She also had a swing at a Lib Dem MSP:
So, y’know, she had this coming.
The Scottish Conservatives manifesto for Holyrood, 2011:
But maybe it’s different if you’re openly campaigning to lose.
If there’s one thing the Scottish Conservatives love to do, it’s lecture the SNP about vetting its candidates. Here’s Ruth Davidson on Michelle Thomson, for example:
And it’s not just her.
This week Scottish Labour have been attacking the SNP’s rather timid plans for the reform of Council Tax, which is an entirely fair and legitimate opposition pursuit.
But as is their wont, Kezia Dugdale’s branch office just can’t help overplaying their hand and doing it in a highly dishonest way.
The dogged determination of Scottish Labour to insult the Scottish electorate is a source of constant slack-jawed astonishment to us. Over the years we’ve lost count of the number of times the party’s politicians have effectively said “People are just too stupid to vote for us”, in the apparent belief that abuse is the way to win back support.
But it’s not always so overt. The subtler ways in which the party treats voters like morons include the assumption that people’s memories only go back to yesterday’s newspapers, and there can surely be no more stark illustration than its recent adoption of the attack line that the SNP are standing “shoulder to shoulder with the Tories”.
Alert readers can’t have failed to notice a desperate Scottish Labour dusting off the old “Tartan Tories” attack on the SNP recently, over the Nats’ unwillingness to join in with Kezia Dugdale’s kerrazy kaper of hiking up income tax.
So after today we can only assume they’ll be looking for some similarly pithy zingers for their colleagues in Wales. They can have this one for free.
Something kept nagging at the back of our minds as we read today’s front-page lead story in Scotland On Sunday about a battle between finance secretary John Swinney and a number of Scottish councils.
And then we remembered what it was.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
