The Nobodies
Apologies for the slightly shonky quality of this video, readers, which is due to the fact that ITV are such monumental self-sabotaging clowns that it’s not actually possible to screencap any sort of digital broadcast of theirs – screw YOU, viral content! – so we had to do this by videoing our iPad with our iPhone.
Ouch. And speaking of monumental self-sabotaging clowns, Scottish Labour.
After the hilarious desertion of Anas Sarwar to the House Of Lords last week, just two months after he pinky-swore he’d never ever ever ever do such a thing:
…the Labour Party is once again searching for a heid bummer for what we’d ordinarily call its North British branch office, if not for the fact that its new leader, the new Prime Minister, has just determined that the “north” is in fact located several hundred miles to the south of said office. Far-North British, perhaps.
The Scottish press, short of much else to write about in the summer silly season, tried to stir itself to whip up some interest in the Sunday papers about who’d get the job – which looks increasingly like a runoff between Michael Marra and Monica Lennon – but you could tell their hearts weren’t in it.
The Sunday Mail ran a leader seeming to back Lennon as a “new direction”, but couldn’t rustle up a sentence to describe anything actually new that she’d represent.
Over at Scotland On Sunday, Euan McColm claimed Marra could “resurrect” the party, but once again any sort of detail on how that might be achieved was conspicuous by its absence, other than the quite abstract idea that he could somehow “quietly and effectively help Burnham deliver for Scotland”, in an unexpected and uncharacteristic outbreak of sunny Pollyanna optimism for the normally bad-tempered scribe.
Marra at least has a wee sliver of integrity, having ducked out of backing the Gender Recognition Reform Act, unlike his colleagues. But the truth, readers, is that nobody can save Scottish Labour. It’s a victim both of unlucky circumstances and its own utter bumbling haplessness. Remarkably, 20 years after the SNP’s first ever election victory the party is still in shock, unwilling and unable to accept there’s been a shift in the political landscape and still imagining that voters will realise the error of their ways and “come home to Labour”, begging forgiveness.
But there’s nothing to come home TO. We spent the whole election campaign asking Labour figures to name a single policy their party differed from the SNP on (save for the moribund issue of the constitution), and never got anything even approaching an answer, because there isn’t one.
Voters tired of the SNP have no interest in voting for the SNP but in red ties. Anyone seeking “change” is far more likely to look for it on the fringes of either the left (Greens) or the right (Reform). Switching to them is like moving house, whereas going SNP-to-Labour is like painting your front door a slightly different shade of the same colour.
Sarwar tried U-turning on gender after the horse had bolted, and he tried going out on a limb by knifing Keir Starmer, but none of it did him any good because the simple fact is that voters have stopped listening to Scottish Labour at all.
The episode of Tipping Point at the top of this article is from the spring of 2019 (though we saw it on a repeat on ITV Quiz yesterday). Ramsay Lundstrom had already been in charge of the Scottish branch office for a year and a half at that point, but neither contestant could even bring his party to mind, let alone him personally.
Scottish Labour has gone backwards in TWO successive Holyrood elections since then, its vote share dropping from 21% to 17%. The SNP’s support has fallen further – from 44% to 33% – in the same six-year period, yet Labour are no closer to power, or even to meaningful opposition. In the all-important list vote they actually came second to Reform, and beat the Greens by just two points. It’s wholly plausible that both parties (whose trajectories are pointing upwards) will overtake Labour at the next election, leaving them in FOURTH place.
Because the thing is, corpses can’t actually be revived. Anas Sarwar’s seemingly-uneventful reign as the regional branch manager was actually a fatal catastrophe, the nailing shut of the doors of the last-chance saloon.
With the SNP in unprecedented, shambolic disarray he completely failed to capitalise on the situation, missing every gaping open goal to put ideological distance between himself and the stumbling party of Sturgeon, Yousaf and Swinney, arrogantly expecting to become First Minister by default without doing anything to earn it, just as Labour had in the 2024 UK election when the Tories finally exhausted voters’ patience.
Scottish Labour have been anonymous and directionless and visionless for so long now that Michael McIntyre and Monica Bellucci couldn’t inject some energy and sex appeal into them, let alone their own Michael and Monica.
Who the party chooses for its next sub-leader is a matter of total indifference to the population of Scotland. They will have precisely no impact on anyone’s lives, and will be lucky to make it as far as the next Holyrood election at all, far less have any chance of winning it.
They don’t even get any extra pay for it (just an allowance for costs), and at the end of it no-one will remember their name. We only bothered talking about it so we’d have an excuse to print a picture of Monica Bellucci. We don’t actually care, and the voters of Scotland care less than we do.
I said this before, but I think it is worth repeating, who would want to be in the SP? OK, to start with it is good money for doing absolutely nothing, but it must be such a depressing place. Can one really be surprised if Anas got out at the first available opportunity?
Theirs a lot in the SNP who are envious that they haven’t been selected to go into the house of Lords, including Sturgeon.
For me I’m glad he’s their. I was sick and tired of listening to his bull about how Scottish he was and how poor the rest of us were at being British.
It’ll not be the House of Lords that Nicola Sturgeon will be going to with US detective Columbo on the case.
link to x.com
Looks like another Big House altogether.
Willie, I don’t have a X account so whats the breaking news?
If the SNP actually wanted independence, instead of simply keeping their jobs for the next 4 or 5 years – if Labour actually represented the workers of the UK, instead of “the international community” and the boat people, if the Conservatives wanted to truly conserve our way of life, instead of trashing it for 30 pieces of silver, if the Liberals could truly see a middle path, instead of acting as a useful lapdog for those who actually wield the power – and if the Green Party went back to being “tree-huggers”, not “under-three-huggers” – if this was what was on offer, then the voters would be spoiled for choice.
So – which set of globalist pedophiles should we cast our vote for?
Excellent comment
Great picture, made reading the article much more interesting. ?
“Number 10 North” is a slogan, not a shift in power.
A new office in Manchester doesn’t rebalance the constitution… and it certainly doesn’t address Scotland, which lies hundreds of miles beyond what Westminster calls ‘the North’.
Real decentralisation happens through law, not branding.
If the structure stays the same, the postcode doesn’t matter.
Burnham might as well have called his rebrand “Number 10 Mars” for all the difference it will make in this world.
Who really cares about the mainstream “Scottish” political parties pissing about in the poundshop devolved Parliament, they just seem to be populated by a bunch of political careerists that jump ship as and when they feel the need and circumstances change to retain their seats at the gravy train.
A lot of what was Labour just morphed into the SNP when they ascended and became the electorally successful option.
If you actually want change you have to stop being a fly constantly orbiting around a stinking shite, and start looking at other new options and grow those seeds into something better.
And politics should be about policy, so let’s not put another caveat on any individual considering stepping up and add that they should look sexy too. I don’t give a fuck what a politician looks like, I jist want them to have integrity and to actually represent their constituents rather than serving their own interests or those of lobbyists.
I think this is the 19th Change of leadership for London’s North Accounting Office, sometimes referred to as Scotland not to be with Andy Burnham’s North in Manchester.
In just 26 years the newly appointed must realise that their average time in office will be a year and a few months but no worries as if you turn out to be a disaster you could end up in the House of Lords after swearing that you wouldn’t go there or like Dugdale who was judged not to understand what she is saying go into university lecturing.
Vote Labour to cut pensioner’s Winter fuel payment and attack the disabled.
Vote Labour and see them build 6 new homes for rent over a 5 year period like they did the last time the ruled over Holyrood.
Vote Labour to see Scotland’s only oil refinery closed.
Vote Labour to see you pay the highest price for electricity in Europe.
Vote Labour as your old Dad had voted for them in yesteryear or just because you like the colour red. What else is there?
Strangely enough I was trying to think of that Labour guy’s name the other day, I was pretty sure it was Rottcod Leotard. Ah well, not to worry.