A natural progression 215
A question for the Labour Party 243
From a piece on Labour’s welfare shadow Rachel Reeves in today’s Guardian.
So… who DOES represent those people, then?
The Great Narrowing 224
Independent website Political Compass has just released its 2015 graph charting the ideological positions of all the political parties of the UK. It’s a fairly predictable one.
On the image above, we’ve added, for parties active in Scotland only, striped circles indicating each party’s 2010 position. But what does it tell us about 2015?
Keeping on keeping on 166
Some readers have been a bit dispirited by the findings of our Panelbase poll this week, which revealed a few quite socially-conservative views among the Scottish population and also found fairly small differences of opinion between Scots and the rest of the UK on a number of issues.
But to be downhearted about the findings is to miss a whole series of points.
The forgotten creed 118
We apologise if the results of our twin social-attitudes polls of both Scotland and the rUK have been a little depressing so far, readers.
Depending on how you choose to look at things (and where you live), this next tranche of data is going to either cheer you up a little bit or make you feel even worse.
A six and two threes 68
We note with interest that the remarkable “I am not and have never been a Unionist” article about Jim Murphy, which vanished last night from the Daily Record website for several hours, has reappeared today. As far as we can see at a glance it’s the same as the original version with one slight alteration.
We’re not sure that was worth all the effort, lads. For most Scots, including a great many in the Labour Party, those are two interchangeable terms.
The Conservative And Labour Party 258
This is Tory activist Sarah Robb. She’s not a very nice person. (We don’t feel too bad about saying that, as she’s no fan of ours either.)
But, y’know, Tory activist, not a nice person – no news there, right?
The great surrender 70
Owen Jones in the Guardian, 7 September 2014:
Many Scots look at the Britain built by this political elite, they don’t like it and they want out.”
Seems to pretty much cover it.
Hobson’s Choice 64
The Telegraph, 10 August 2014:
Nice to have a range of democratic options about punishing the poor, isn’t it, Britons?
That pesky vortex again 195
Kudos is due to the Daily Record today, which has a large and prominent feature about NHS surgeon Dr Philippa Whitford, with whom readers should be familiar. Her message, from a position of knowledge and authority, of the fate awaiting the NHS on both sides of the border is a powerful one and makes a strong case for a Yes vote.
Obviously, that upsets both Labour and the No campaign very much.
You can trust the Labour Party 95
There’s an interesting article on the Guardian today from the invariably-excellent former music journalist John Harris entitled “The crisis in the Labour party goes much deeper than Ed Miliband”, which looks at how a 280-page policy document published this month by the Labour-leaning IPPR thinktank was boiled down by the party for public and media consumption to “cutting benefits for young people”.
That got us to thinking about something, but luckily before we’d wasted too much time on thinking we discovered that Labour Uncut had helpfully already done the research we were about to embark on for us.