For a' that.

A year on from the referendum and the political change or progress made in Scotland in the last year has been inescapable – but really it’s the climax of a far longer and more deep rooted movement – largely fuelled by the historical ignorance, avarice, self - and dis-interest of established politicians in both Tory and Labour parties and the UK establishment.

One year on I am more optimistic than ever for Scotland and its people. There is light at the end of the unionist tunnel, the light of taking responsibility for our own affairs, playing a unique part in the world not filtered through the needs of the UK and being a good neighbour to England and wider afield. Scots are not rushing towards it in an emotional pell mell of Braveheartery or anti-Englishness, but rather approaching in a measured way, considering the benefits of change, and noting the disadvantages of the current set up, reinforced as they are daily through a mainstream media with little or no journalistic integrity.

When we are ready, we will become independent, on our own terms .
It’s coming yet for a’ that.

Disection of balance in a media 'storm'

Here's a link to an interesting and informative article from Newsnet, one of the independent media sites in Scotland, reviewing how BBC Scotland reacted to former First Minister and current SNP MP Alex Salmond answering a direct question from a BBC politics journalist in London.  It's worth a look.

Taking Back 'The Agenda'

 

                              

British politics is framed and guided by an “Agenda”. We will frequently observe reference to the term whenever we attempt to find out what is going on in our political system, catch up on the ‘news’ or access our political information from conventional media sources, whether newspapers, journals or broadcast. The public may appear to participate in political debate, albeit at some distance from the major decisions; but there is no doubt that the public does not set the Agenda. The “Agenda” is set for us; we dip into a political dialogue the terms of which have already been fixed by an established political and communications order.
 

Over time the public has come to take this “Agenda” and its recondite creation for granted; the influence of the BBC, for example, has encouraged the broad public acceptance of the terms of political debate subtly being set for us through ninety years of persistently asserted explicatory impartiality; and as citizens we have in consequence too easily, and too often, set aside our natural skepticism, or failed to exercise our critical faculties, only casually to accept views or policies that may be inimical both to our interests or even to the public interest, in order to serve what we take to be a Common Good that, on closer inspection of our phoney-adversarial political system, we would otherwise observe is little more than a Political Cartel serving predominantly established, well connected Vested Interests.
 

There is even an ITV news/current affairs programme (fronted by Tom Bradby) that titles itself the “Agenda”; it discusses political issues that it presents pre-formed, and which the public has neither initiated nor had any real influence in framing. All of this remote, manipulative political-psychological activity can only have the purpose or effect of subliminally reconciling a politically passive public with otherwise irreconcilable policies or oppressive political dogma. I shall call this overarching, established political framework, that provides us with the pre-formed nature, tone and content of virtually all political debate that is, quite erroneously, offered to the British public as fully-fledged participatory democracy; the “Official Agenda”.
 

Westminster is central to setting the “Official Agenda” because Parliament provides the only credible assurance the Official Agenda can offer that it possesses the confidence of the wider public it purports to serve, or any claim that the Official Agenda represents the public interest. The power of other formidable institutions that also influence the Official Agenda is parasitic upon the democratic authority of Westminster and its elected politicians.
 

The mainstream print and broadcast media may also claim authority in setting the Official Agenda either through the reach of their circulations (print), or their approved regulatory access to the spectrum (typically broadcasters, led by the BBC). Other powerful, mainly corporate institutions exercise their influence on the Official Agenda through less direct or open means than either the public pronouncements of media or politicians, and are therefore more insidious in their effects. The methods these institutions use include, but are not restricted to, the lobbying of politicians (or parties) at Westminster, operating a revolving door of career patronage between Westminster and the corporate world, the use of economic or financial power; or the application of extensive, professional, Public Relations machinery, which may in turn be indirect and insidious: hence the disproportionate influence of the banking sector and the City on the Official Agenda.
 

At the same time the Official Agenda is slowly relying less on politicians or media to influence the public, principally because it is fairly obvious even to politicians and media that neither agency has been able to sustain public trust in the face of recent, persistent, obvious and damaging failures. We are thus now frequently persuaded to follow orthodox, conventional opinion on political policy, not through the direct appeal of politicians (with whom we may not agree), or the editorialising of the media (which we may believe are biased), but by the routine appeal to the support of “expert opinion”: commentators, critics, analysts, to whom both media and politicians frequently resort. These experts typically represent a wide variety of ‘Think-Tanks’, ‘Research Organisations’, ‘Industry Specialists’ that we, the public, know nothing about (and which may be funded by Vested Interests), but we are invited to believe are the only people who understand “the facts”; experts who are scrupulously “impartial”, and of course experts who are never wrong. Their credentials are rarely debated. It has become commonplace for politicians to attempt to de-politicise highly political issues by quoting so-called independent experts, whose assertions are not themselves challenged, thoroughly analysed or de-constructed in detail; but whose conclusions are invariably in harmony with the Official Agenda. We rarely hear from a dissenting “expert” whose thinking is not in harmony with the Official Agenda, but their absence from the debate only serves to feed the general impression supplied, the implicit acknowledgement that there are no dissenters among ‘real’ experts; dissent from the Official Agenda is thus rendered absurd. Dissent is the prerogative of cranks.
 

Everything debated publicly and widely disseminated in British politics is framed within terms and contexts established and guided by the Official Agenda. There is therefore no alternative narrative to the Official Agenda. It should be noted however that the Official Agenda relies on the conduct of political debate being first established, then expressed, reported and disseminated through a very narrow range of interconnected interests: Westminster, politicians, the mainstream print and broadcast media, or skilled public relations through a wide variety of outlets.
 

The defence may be offered that while the Official Agenda may be largely pre-packaged, it nevertheless offers alternative solutions; there is a political choice. The choice offered by the Official Agenda however, you will invariably and inevitably find will turn out to be singular; it is Hobson’s Choice. The Official Agenda simplifies and bifurcates debate into two simple options: the preferred and ‘sensible’ option, and the ‘cranks’ option: thus Government and political parties (whether Conservative, Labour or Coalition), media, the City, and other major institutions coalesce around a stock, consensus, orthodox conventional wisdom, typically a hard-line, impermeable neo-liberal economic (or neo-conservative political) ideology, which is presented in very simple terms as responsible, common-sense and obviously representative of virtue, and as the only honest representation of real and permanent human values: an exemplar and a consensus. This consensus claims to be tough-minded, but it typically prefers the anodyne and the anecdotal to thorough evidence, rigorous analysis, hard facts or a candid exposition of recent political history, as it must do if it is to avoid controversy or quickly unravel. It is the principal purpose of the Official Agenda therefore to compare the ‘consensus’ in contrast with a single and alarmingly dysfunctional alternative (there is no complexity, no multiple options); loopy sentiment and irresponsibility is the supposed foundation of any challenge to the consensus. A mere distortion is manufactured in opposition to conventional wisdom, a “straw-man” argument that is set-up only to be struck-down. It is not sufficient that this alternative possesses flaws; it is presented as being obviously irrational and irresponsible. The conclusion is obvious; there is no alternative.
 

Let us examine one example of what the effects of the operation of the Official Agenda actually means. The rescued banks have not only had their losses underwritten by the taxpayer, but were granted an open-ended guarantee of central bank support, effectively no matter what they do (the ‘too big to fail’ [TBTF] escape clause that Mark Carney said in June 2014 that the Bank of England was “seeking” to end; seven years after the Crash); RBS shares currently held by the state will be returned to the private sector at a low-point (at a loss to the state, but with all the future upside reserved for the private sector); while the Vickers Report’s regulatory regime, designed to control bank excesses, was amended to meet the objections of the banks that had failed the country, before implementation and in spite of Vickers himself warning that the Report should only be implemented in its entirety, or not at all. The banks have in consequence of all these confused and contradictory policies, effectively come out of the Credit Crunch more powerfully placed than they were before the crash, but little chastened: they have successfully passed their losses on to the public sector, survived almost unscathed the consequences of their own folly, effectively continued to consolidate their reach and range of influence, and now have almost succeeded in dominating the whole economy; while they have largely avoided material restrictions on their continued freedom to take whatever risks they choose. According to the Official Agenda this is a triumph of good government.
 

The sobering context to illustrate the scale of the problems we have not been prepared to face is found in comparison with the US: in 2010 the assets of only six major banks was equivalent to 60% of US GDP (Johnson & Kwak; ’13 Bankers’): a situation bad enough to concern wise Americans who may at least be reassured that however flawed the banking system, their country is protected by the scale of the greatest economy in the world. In the UK however, RBS total assets in 2008 were alone over 100% of UK GDP; in 2014 they were still circa 60% of UK GDP, accounted by a single bank; and there are a number of other very large UK banks operating on an international scale. The UK compared to the US however, has a relatively small economy that is effectively now the prisoner of a financial behemoth of a financial sector that it does not regulate adequately, manage or control. The elephant has squashed the room.
 

This is allowed to happen because the Official Agenda asserts that the financial sector, the City, is effectively the principal driving force of the UK economy; and the City’s success effectively funds government expenditure and provides Britain with the standard of living it enjoys (or for the many who are overlooked, the standard of living they ‘survive’). Any attempt to challenge the power of the City and the Banks is met by arguments that “over” regulating them (which appears to mean all attempts to introduce any effective regulation or control at all) would destroy business confidence, lead the banks to move their key activities abroad and ruin the UK economy.
 

Why do I say this? The banks already protest at the level of fines, the constant criticism (as if it was undeserved), while at least one major bank has been reported to be considering moving its headquarters out of London. At the same time the banking sector apologists argue that the more we attempt to make a bank safe “the less likely it is to take risk …” (Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph 12th June); as if what we really require in the UK, even after the catastrophic Crash, is risk-taking banks: but this is how the Official Agenda works; the preposterous becomes conventional.
 

The Official Agenda account survives in spite of the fact that the distortions caused by the City, and the unbalanced nature of the British economy are well understood to require radical reform. The Official Agenda survives in spite of the fact that it is not the banks but the taxpayer (represented by the Bank of England as ‘lender of last resort’) who carries all the risks of the TBTF regime. The real criticism, the real indictment of the way the Official Agenda has ridden rough-shod over wisdom or basic judgement, however is found in the fact that eight years after the Credit Crunch Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, in his Mansionhouse speech (10th June) was reduced to threatening (some might think not before time) that serious actions would at last follow the appalling activities within the sector that have continued long after the Crash, and some three years after the new tripartite semi-Vickers regulatory regime was implemented to change the banking culture. After £3Bn of FCA fines for failures in the financial sector have so obviously failed to stop persistent misconduct, the Governor was nevertheless prompted to claim, somewhat prematurely we may surmise, that: “The Age of Irresponsibility is over”.
 

For the avoidance of doubt, the age of irresponsibility should have been over long before 2007, and after that catastrophe it should certainly not have been allowed to fester until 2015. What can be said of a Coalition Government (which included the current Conservative Prime Minister and Chancellor) which presided 2010-15 over a banking sector that the Governor has now described in the following terms?:

“The Bank of England’s general approach [to regulation] was consistent with the attitude of FICC markets, which historically relied heavily on informal codes and understandings. That informality was well suited to an earlier age. But as markets innovated and grew, it proved wanting.

Most troubling have been the numerous incidents of misconduct that exploited such informality, undercutting public trust and threatening systemic stability.

This has had direct economic consequences. Mistrust between market participants has raised borrowing costs and reduced credit availability. Falling confidence in market resilience has meant companies have held back productive investments. And uncertainty has meant people have hesitated to move job or home. These effects are not trivial, and they have reduced the dynamism of our economy in the post-crisis years.

Widespread mistrust has also had deeper, indirect costs. Markets are not ends in themselves, but powerful means for prosperity and security for all. As such they need to retain the consent of society – a social licence – to be allowed to operate, innovate and grow. Repeated episodes of misconduct have called that social licence into question.

We have all been let down by these developments. And we all share responsibility for fixing them”.

The Governor went on to say that: “common standards, cast in clear language” were now required; this would be laughable if such an expression of need for something so basic that has failed to be provided was not already teetering on the edge of utter intolerability. The fact is, such “standards” are not difficult to assert. What has been lacking is the will to implement them, and that is an indictment of the whole culture, not just of banking, or the City, or of regulators, but of government and Westminster. Furthermore, the regulatory “informality” to which Carney refers was quite obviously never well-suited to the post-Big Bang era (1986), when the respected and stable banking culture, especially that which had been built in Scotland, was callously and systematically destroyed. The failings of the new orthodoxy were never addressed by the Official Agenda, in spite of the fact that it did not require hindsight to perceive the folly. Thirty years of inappropriate “informality” is not an oversight, but at best a form of regulatory and legislative cowardice: I am being kind for the failures have been gross. Similarly, the “social licence’” has not been questioned, it has been torn up by the banks without raising a moment’s dissent in Westminster.
 

Similar observations could be made about the shallow, duplicitous nature of the Official Agenda when it is called-up to defend or obfuscate inconsistent, unedifying, failed Government policies across the spectrum. For example, over “austerity”, where the Government’s front-bench backwoodsmen now proudly display their economic illiteracy as a badge of neo-liberal honour; or on “immigration” where the current anti-immigration stance is inconsistent with a UK economic policy for ‘growth’ that relies so heavily on immigration-driven population growth, which in turn is used by the Government to consolidate a low wage environment which exploits the opportunities for zero-hour contracts. The major flaw cannot be hidden however, as the policy inevitably produces the critical economic tell-tale that goes with such shoddy policy manipulation; endemic, low UK productivity: a very British disease.
 

Foreign policy also provides numerous examples of Official Agenda distortion: our Libyan adventures first promoted policies that cultivated the Gaddafi regime, then actively sought regime change. Bad judgement and erratic politics fed irresponsible interventions to change the regime, which has now produced the worst of all possible outcomes: Libya is a failed state and a power vacuum that has managed to destabilise the whole Mediterranean coastline. We are all paying the price of British Government folly, but an account of the deplorable mess that Britain did so much to induce will not be found in the British Foreign Policy Official Agenda; save only quietly to sacrifice the Foreign Secretary, William Hague who vigorously prosecuted regime change in Libya, and celebrated the achievement: presumably a sacrifice made by the Conservatives to avoid culpability falling on the Eden-esque figure of David Cameron. Britain’s profoundly failed foreign policy agenda in this sphere has not wavered or changed, no matter the scale of the catastrophe or defeat.
 

You may have your own example of the Official Agenda’s failings. There is virtually no area of government that would not provide similar evidence of a cynical, counter-rational, Official Agenda that was solely constructed to present systematic government policy failure as informed wisdom.

It is noteworthy that social media does not follow this mainstream ‘Official Agenda’, often in subject matter, invariably in content, even if a social media dialogue is sparked by an ‘Official Agenda’ issue or event. Social media allows, indeed asserts an agenda that is set principally, if not wholly, by the large number of participants communicating through direct interaction with websites, or through such media as Facebook or Twitter: in short, the public sets the agenda. I shall term this public communication space provided by social media, the “Public Agenda”; not because it is fully representative of the public, but rather because it is the only genuine space in which public opinion may not only be heard, but initiates for itself the terms of debate. It is also the only substantive alternative to the Official Agenda.
 

The Public Agenda undermines the credibility of the Official Agenda. The current discomfort of the British political system through the sudden, radical changes to the nature of Scottish politics over the last year, and the required terms of debate about the future of a quasi-federal Britain, is a function of the inability of mainstream British politics to communicate with the public openly, or even with itself outside the framework of an Official Agenda that does not recognise any terms of debate that it does not first (and exclusively) set.
 

The Public Agenda has liberated the public in Scotland; two years of referendum debate opened politics to a new dynamic of public political engagement and participation; largely through alternative media, websites and social media. It was empowering, and through both the referendum and the 2015 General Election, the Scottish people discovered that they could take control of the political agenda, and both the direction and pace of political change. In Scotland it is now the public, not the politicians who are in charge of the Agenda: for only a political Agenda set by the public, and not by politicians, parties or media could produce a ‘No’ vote in the referendum in September, only for the same public, systematically and ruthlessly, all but destroy everything ‘above ground’ in all three Unionist parties in Scotland (Better Together), in the General Election the following May. The Scottish people have taken the political lead for themselves (perhaps from the point they realised neither David Cameron nor Better Together were going to offer the second referendum question the Scottish electorate clearly desired and expected) in a new climate of change and reform. This would not have been possible without social media, and it is striking that successful politics in Scotland over the last two-three years is less a function of the (apparent) leadership of the SNP, than the swift adaptive capacity of the SNP to follow the lead provided by the public mood, and to use social media adroitly to serve the public demand. The SNP leads cleverly, but only by following the lead provided by the Scottish people.
 

Meanwhile, we should remain vigilantly aware that the Official Agenda is not there to explore the critical issues of the day, but to ensure that they are not aired. The Official Agenda is intended to close debate, not open it; its purpose is not to inform, but misinform. The Official Agenda is not the servant of reason, but its enemy. The Official Agenda is there not to celebrate democracy, but to defeat it.
 

The public response should not be to rise to the faux-challenge presented by the Official Agenda, but to override or discard it altogether; in order to establish political aspirations and debate through the creation and maintenance of a Public Agenda set by the Scottish people. This is hard, most of all to sustain over time; but it is the price of democracy in the 21st century.

 

John Warren.

 

This is a repost if an article from Bella Caledonia

Link to this article

Full Fiscal Project Fear Arrives As Expected

NICOLA Sturgeon flew to the USA; she walked back.

NICOLA Sturgeon flew to the USA; she walked back.

OK then, I've been absent for a while. Och well, it's not like anything much has happened lately. We've had an election, seen SNP take 56 out of 59 Scottish seats, saw labour lose 40 out if 41 seats, most of their best known MP's and its revered leader, James Murphy esq. We saw the Lib-dems decimated across the UK, saw Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg fall on their swords and resign, saw Davie Cameron fluke a wafer thin Tory majority in Westminster and ex Secretary Of State for Scotland, Lib Dem Alistair Carmichael, shown to be a lying toerag who instigated an attempt to smear the first minister during the final stages of the election and just managed to cling on to his own seat after losing 85% of his previous majority to the SNP, making him the sole Lib Dem in Scotland.. This became evident after the election {quelle surprise} and has led to calls for a rerun of the election in Orkney and Shetland and a public campaign which raised £60,000 to cover fees for a legal challenge to his election. With the only Tory MP in Scotland now made Secretary Of State, that joke about more pandas in Edinburgh zoo than Tory MP's now applies to all the main UK parties.  Have I missed anything else? Aye. The sad death of Charles Kennedy from alcohol related illness which appears to have been blamed on the SNP winning his seat and breaking his heart or his will to live depending on which paper you read.

 

Things have moved on. The 56 new SNP MP's have finally managed to find seats and offices in Westminster, have been allocated responsibilities, including chairing two committees and have got down to the day to day business of raising Scotland's profile by peeing off the Westminster establishment by clapping, asking sensible questions, turning up for work every day and ordering a chip buttie in the canteen.

 

As you would expect MSM has not been best pleased by the lection results and take every chance they can to put a negative spin on any SNP doings as nasty threats to the integrity {sic} of the UK and fiscal irresponsibility. This is particularly true of the amendments requested to the Scotland Bill, that watered down, rushed through, ill conceived and unworkable proposed legislation designed not to fulfil 'THE VOW' but to trap the Scottish Govt by giving them only the most toxic and unbalanced set of powers possible and goading them to try and use them to off set the ideological austerity that most respected economists are now publicly saying is not only unnecessary but damaging to the UK economy. Here's an intelligent and balanced take on some of the issues around what's happening now from Iain Macwhirter   In The Herald on Sunday this week he wrote:

 

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/like-project-fear-fiscal-autonomy-scare-stories-demean-scotland-and-harm-the-unio.128852896

      

So goes the joke about how "Saint Nicola" as Labour's Lord Foulkes calls the First Minister, went down so well stateside she now walks on water.

There she was swapping jokes with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, holding artsy receptions at the Lincoln Plaza in New York, lecturing officials the White House, meeting the IMF's Christine Lagarde, but not President Obama. "Well, we didn't ask" said the Scottish Government, somewhat disingenuously.

All this adoration of Ms Sturgeon seems unfair. Few political leaders get such star treatment, not even Alex Salmond in his hey day. (What was all that about him being the back-seat driver?) She has managed to combine being an elected leader with being a celebrity. Well, she should enjoy it while it lasts, say Labour.

Back home the press was full of new "blows" to Sturgeon over the falling price of oil. "Nicola Sturgeon's dream of full fiscal autonomy in tatters" cried the Daily Record. The referendum was supposed to have resolved the constitutional issue, but clearly the campaign is still running, only now over FFA.

Press commentary had been dominated by a claim that the SNP was "running scared" of calling for all tax powers to be devolved to Holyrood. Sturgeon had, the headlines claimed, "shelved" plans to table such an amendment to the Scotland Bill.

"The SNP promised in their manifesto to deliver FFA", said Labour's Shadow Scottish Secretary, Ian Murray, last weekend, "but they have barely settled into their Westminster offices before abandoning it."

However, when the SNP did then put down an amendment to this effect four days later, the critics did a handbrake turn. "The SNP's economic credibility is in tatters," said Ian Murray, even though they were doing what he had been urging them to do.

The odd thing about this whole FFA debate is that everyone knows it's not going to happen. Labour and the Tories were never going to hand over full tax-raising powers to Holyrood. Yet if you read the Scottish press you'd have thought Scotland was on the brink of actually getting devolution max.
It's like that early referendum which people said Nicola Sturgeon was going to call when she clearly wasn't. David Cameron has always opposed fiscal autonomy on the grounds that if you give full economic powers to Scotland it might as well be independent. And he has a point. Full fiscal autonomy is a policy that no-one really wants, even though everyone seems to want to talk about it.
The SNP talk about fiscal autonomy because they see it as a step to full independence. Their amendment is intended to call the bluff of Conservative MPs who have been saying that it is about time the Scots were jolly well told to manage their own affairs and stop robbing English taxpayers.
Labour and the press want to talk about fiscal autonomy because falling the oil price makes independence look like a bad deal. They assume - wrongly - that fiscal autonomy is essentially the same as independence, and so they can use the same arguments.

But the lesson of the referendum, and even more so the General Election, is that FFA actually made relatively little impact in the end. The relentless warnings in the press about "deficits" and "black holes" didn't stop the SNP winning the biggest landslide in election history. And the focus on FFA since the election is doing little to help Labour recover its lost ground in Scotland.
Last week's Herald/TNS poll on Holyrood voting intentions was devastating. It suggested that 60% of Scots now intend to vote SNP in the Scottish Parliamentary elections next year, leaving Labour with precisely zero constituency seats in Holyrood. Worse, it indicated that 80% of voters under 35 are now supporters of the SNP against only 6% for Labour.

The Labour Party is dying out in Scotland, yet it continues to bang away relentlessly on the same message without asking why it isn't working. Are the voters just stupid? Why can't Scots get the message that they can't go it alone without economic hardship?

In fact there's reason to believe that the FFA scare, like its parent Project Fear, has actually damaged the Union rather than strengthened it. The rhetoric is entirely negative and to many Scots, demeaning. It is effectively saying that, unlike any other small country in Europe, Scotland is uniquely incapable of running its own affairs and managing its own economy.

Unionists insist they are not saying Scots are "too wee too poor too stupid" but that's how it sounds to many voters. That is why so many Scots get angry about the press reports on Scotland's alleged inability to finance independence; they think it's just running their country down and they don't like it.

Actually it's worse - it looks like a case of: "The UK got the oil, now it's running out, you're on your own. Hahaha." Scotland remains the only nation, state or region to have oil discovered in its waters and receive no direct benefit.

Nicola Sturgeon understands this, which is why she hardly bothers rebutting the IFS numbers. She isn't like Alex Salmond, who used to get riled and would argue the toss endlessly about the economic numbers. What she has been doing, with considerable success, is acting as if Scotland already was an independent country.

Critics say she is running away from the reality - but what actually is the reality here? If there were fiscal autonomy, the calculations based on the General Expenditure and Revenue Statistics would no longer apply. Scotland would be raising all tax locally and sending a subvention south for common services like defence and foreign affairs. That would have to be negotiated as would Scotland's burden of debt and repayments.

There would also be the tricky question of equalisation payments between Scotland and the UK. This is not independence, but a form of federalism, so even with fiscal autonomy there would be transfer payments to be negotiated as there are in all federal systems.

This may sound like the Scots getting their cake and eating it, but the point is that FFA, unlike independence, does not mean fiscal separation. All financial relationships would be subject to continual negotiation like everything else in a federal system.

There is little point in speculating about the precise nature of these negotiations because FFA is not going to happen. What is going to happen is much worse than FFA. Next year Scotland gets to set a Scottish rate of income tax - but no powers over the other taxes - and an invitation to use it to reverse Westminster-imposed benefit cuts.

This is a transparent fiscal trap. The Unionist parties hope the Scottish Government will repeat the "penny for Scotland" campaign of 1999 and lose votes in the election. They assume Scottish voters will never vote for increased taxes.

But it sounds as if John Swinney is minded to call their bluff and offer precisely that at the next election. And if he makes a sound moral case, he may well get away with it. The politics of tax are different in Scotland as the Tories found in the 1990s. And the more Labour appears to be using the same language as the Tories on taxation, fiscal autonomy and the Scottish "deficit", the more it is alienating its own core voters. Those voters would much rather take selfies with the woman who has become the living embodiment of the values of the new Scotland.


Listening to:
 

THe British Establishment Is Losing It's shit!

 

Reblogged from 'The Vice'

A piece by Oliver Hutson.

In 2011, the Conservatives had ruled out a referendum on genuine voting reform – a system of proportional representation, as the Lib Dems and reformers wanted. Cameron allowed only a vote on AV – another majoritarian system that is only marginally better than FPTP. Seats and votes would still be wildly out of synch, tactical voting and safe seats would continue (Labour, it should be noted, were only too happy to assist the Tories in killing the reform for similarly self-interested reasons). Again, Cameron shut down a basic democratic request – that the seats a party gets are in proportion to its votes – in the interests of his party.
 
As the polls stand now, the Tories have 35 percent, UKIP 13 percent and the Lib Dems 9 percent, a combined share of the vote of 57 percent. In a proportional, democratic system, they would have around 57 percent of the seats – they'd have a majority, assuming Clegg could be persuaded to work with Farage. Given Clegg's history, it seems a fair shout that another sniff of power would happily make up for any personal queasiness, and he has made quite plain in interviews he would rather work with the Tories than Labour. Even were Clegg to stand firm, a straight Tory UKIP coalition is only a couple of percentage points away under a proportional vote.

Assuming either of the above, Cameron would have remained Prime Minister. What's interesting about the proposition is that in the AV referendum the Conservatives and the right-wing press, to the last, backed first-past-the-post. The press are staunch opponents of more democratic voting systems because the current mess gives them considerable leverage, and more representative government would likely be much tougher on corporate power – something their billionaire proprietors are naturally keen to avoid. Yet as things now stand, the old defence of first-past-the-post – that it provides "strong government" – has melted away. For the second time in five years the system will have delivered a hung parliament.

Early in the Coalition, Cameron changed the law to effectively lock himself in as Prime Minister for a full five years, fearing a breakdown in the Lib-Con coalition. Changing the rules in his Fixed Term Parliaments Act, he blocked an early election by ensuring governments have five year terms. To trigger an early election, a two-thirds majority in the Commons is now required, rather than a simple majority. A vote of no confidence could still be lost with a simple majority, triggering an early election, but this seems now the only plausible way to cut short a five year term. If Miliband gets in, the same rules will apply – he will be locked in too, and Conservatives will have to put up with him.
The Tories look set to be hoist by at least three of their own petards – failing to secure boundary reform, blocking a referendum on Proportional Representation and the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.
Understandably, the right-wing press are now apoplectic. They have spent years hammering Miliband – he is a joke, a geek, he can't even eat a bacon sandwich. It is not possible for the public to elect him. But it looks they will. That he will be propped up by the SNP turns the unsightly into the obscene. They're not going to accept it.

Adam Ramsay wrote some weeks ago that the press would attempt a "coup" in such a result, and demand Cameron remain as leader of the party with "the most seats". But that's not how things work in Britain – the Prime Minister is the person who can command a majority of MPs in the House of Commons, even if that means making a coalition with another party or forming minority government. What the press are now trying to do, and have been doing for weeks, is lay the ground for stopping Miliband forming a minority government. First, they and the Tories led repeated demands that Miliband rule out a formal coalition with the SNP – a party that will have around 50 seats in the House of Commons, democratically elected. Miliband caved and ruled it out.


Watch our political correspondent Gavin Haynes find out who will stand up for the Establishment:


The next stage is convincing the public that Sturgeon and the SNP are nationalist sociopaths who want to destroy us all – even a Labour minority propped up by the SNP (as opposed to a formal coalition) is, in Cameron's terminology, "despicable". On the 10th of April, the Mail even ran a poll asking whether the SNP should be able to partner only with the party with most seats – testing the water for whether the public could be convinced that the Tories had a constitutional right to govern and an SNP-Lab alliance was illegitimate. A ridiculous notion, but they did the poll all the same. That's how desperate things are getting. And things are now starting to spiral.

In the Mail on Saturday, you could see the cogs painfully turning. Headlines included "STURGEON HOLDS BRITAIN TO RANSOM" and "Scotland has lost its marbles". In its editorial, it said, "a terrifyingly plausible vision is looming" – a Lab-SNP government, a "hideously undemocratic 'coalition of chaos'". The next page, Robert Hardman writes of Sturgeon that despite securing "just 4 percent of the national vote, she could... be king maker". UKIP, he continues, will get three times more votes than the SNP, but ten times less seats – "a democratic deficit to make the blood boil". In Platell's column she writes that it would be "the greatest democratic injustice to befall our entire nation". Just to recap: both the Mail and the Conservatives worked very hard to retain the undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system that is now causing these big mismatches between votes won and seats won. It's just that this time they're getting butt-hurt because the system is working against them.

On Sunday, the "coup" stepped up a gear. In a fascinating piece in the Sunday Times, we learn that the Queen – who technically has the power to choose who forms the government – has had to make clear she will not get involved in propping up a government that does not have the support of the majority of MPs. It stresses that we don't know whether it's Miliband or Cameron who asked the question, but there is one revealing quote from a Palace source: "Cameron remains Prime Minister but he can't borrow the Queen for support".

 
There's good reason for believing the real story here is that it is the Conservatives who have approached the Palace about shoring up a potential Tory minority government that cannot command a majority.
 
People should be in no doubt how far the Tories, the City and the right-wing press will go to get their man in. Nick Clegg is already describing the SNP's participation in government as "illegitimate" – essentially saying a democratically elected party shouldn't be allowed in government because he doesn't like them. Should a Labour-SNP majority be the outcome of the election, we can expect to hear a lot more of that, as the Conservatives try and undermine the British electorate's decision – voiced through a crooked system that they tried so hard to save – so that they stay in power.


If Buckingham Palace can be convinced – through the creation of an atmosphere where a Labour-SNP coalition is considered unthinkable – to retain Cameron above a Labour leader that can command a majority in the House, that really would be a power grab that would raise eyebrows in a banana republic. It would make a total mockery of the British "constitution". The fact that the Palace have even had to brief against the idea – that it's even a possibility to the Conservatives that the Palace would overrule the electorate – is astonishing. Yet it seems likely that is exactly what the Tories have been sounding out.

Short of some major reversals in the polls, one way or another we are about to enter the realm of serious constitutional breakdown.

Who's for porage?

If The Yolk Sticks

 

 

                                          Reposted from  Lallands Peat Worrier.

 

 

If the yolk sticks.

 

 

You would be hard pushed to invent a worse story for Jim Murphy and his Scottish and UK Labour colleagues, every which way you look at it. The Eds are anxious to establish their fiscal probity. They will never satisfy the baying hounds of the Tory press, but doughty little fiends that they are, they are desperate to show that they can "responsibly" hack away at the British state with the best of them. 

The usual suspects are itching for any opportunity or pretext to question Miliband's commitment to the deficit-frame of "fiscal probity". But the Labour leader held the line, with a cauld kale offering of cuts, interspersed with a few simple, positive, constructive ideas. A mean repast it may be, but compared to the ragged, personalised, unstrategic mess that is the Tory base campaign, you can rattle off a few clear and cogent Labour proposals on one hand. For voters of the left, much of this is robbed of its substance and vitality by the overarching commitment to the deficit fetish economics which Ed Balls has imbibed -- but there it is. Choices made. Lines drawn.

Mr Murphy's task is even trickier. He has deemed it expedient to tack to the left to restore Scottish Labour's ailing fortunes, keen to pin the SNP as careless cutters in contrast with his gloss on Labour economic plans as an "end to austerity". Simultaneously, Scottish Jim for Scotland has taken Scottish Henry McLeish's Scottish advice that Scottish Labour should embrace Scottish patriotism. He has also been struggling to cast off the acrylic uniform of the party's "branch manager", run up by tricoteuse and Murphy oustee, Johann Lamont, and to establish himself as the Heid Neep of Scottish Labour's warring vegetable rack of parliamentarians, divided by their jealousies, ambitions and contempts. 

Labour is onto two losing games here. If you want a chill hearted bastard to "balance the books", why vote Labour? Why go for the bloodless alternative? Why not back blue and get the real thing? Similarly, if you are the kind of voter animated by the idea of your representatives "standing up for Scotland", why back Labour over the SNP? Cram as many references to Scotland into your Twitter profile as you like, apply a patriotic gatling gun to your election literature - you are always going to be facing a Scottish National Party whose sole fealty is to the voters north of the border, without inconvenient colleagues with different and legitimate and incompatible political agendas in the rest of the country.

On austerity and the narrow Scottish interest -- it is a battle you can't win.  If Labour aspire to remain a - or the - national UK party, I'd have thought they'd be best to push back against this limited "patriotic" agenda, rather than embracing it. Which is a long-winded way of saying: both of these -- it seems to me -- are losing games for Scottish Labour to play. But poor Jim finds himself locked into, or has chosen to play, both hands. Cue broken eggs.

Today's "slapdown" by Labour's shadow business spokesman, Chuka Umunna, and Ed Balls, undermines just about everything that Jim Murphy has been agitating so antically to promote: Labour as an anti austerity alternative, his own office as robust, independent, "patriotic", in charge of the Scottish contingent in Westminster, paying the piper and calling the tune. But Chuka was having none of that, offering up this suspiciously quotable demolition of Mr Murphy's position to Andrew Neill this lunchtime. Gey generous it was of him too:

"The leader of the Scottish Labour Party will not be in charge of the UK budget. The leader of our country, our next prime minister, Ed Miliband, will be in charge of the UK budget and he has just answered the question, when that was put to him - will there be any cuts over the course of this parliament not just in the first financial year, but in the following financial years?  And he was absolutely clear - there will be the need for further consolidation and cuts throughout the rest of the parliament."

This doesn't even leave Mr Murphy the wriggle room to be a critical friend of the UK leadership, pursuing different priorities from within the UK Labour Party. If you want to give the Labour party the heart and stomach to pursue different priorities -- there is clearly no point backing Jim. Even his own senior colleagues apparently see him as an irrelevance, and do not have the good grace to conceal their indifference to his opinion from the public. 

Today's clash also helps to marginalise impressions of Mr Murphy's control over his own Westminster parliamentarians.  In principle, at least, Jim heads up the whole contingent of Scottish representatives -- but the Eds apparently regard his colleagues as their worker bees, to troop biddably through the lobbies in Westminster without reference to the manic pterodactyl (Alex Massie™). It is the old, unedited hubris. But it diminishes Jim to a cypher, to do as telt, again. Either the Scottish Labour leader a) misunderstood the nature of his UK colleagues' plans, or b) dissembled about it none too subtly, but whether a) or b) is the case, his point of view is dismissed as irrelevant. 

If Murphy cuts up rough, he gives the Tory press an enviable opportunity to chuck muck at Ed Miliband. If he doesn't, and keeps his tongue in his head, he looks craven, disingenuous, calculating, and ineffective. A fine day at the office, all around. Tonight, the frittatas are on Jim.

And They're Off!

Sorry it's been a whiley since the last posting. I've been laid low with viruses and vomiting and other such treats as always seem to come around when you have time off work full of plans for doing nice things and nothings at all. Such is life eh?

So - the election race to get to first-past-the-post has started and what an exciting and upliftingly fine spectacle it is to see our wonderful Westminster political leaders all laying out their stalls with positive messages about the wondrous policies they'd bring to the table, except they're not of course. Well, with limited exceptions and no-one believes the Lib-Dems any more.

Maybe I should recap - refresh my memory - what's been happening while I've been shouting at Hughie and Ralph down the big white telephone or lying comatose on the sofa while my wife tries to get me to go to bed and stop making the place look untidy or polluting the atmosphere with groaning and constant demands for neck rubs and scrambled egg on toast that almost never gets eaten. Oh yes. You can almost feel the love. It's like that 'Love Bombing' that happened in the referendum all over again isn't it?

Oh no, Right. It isn't.

Parliament has dissolved - which might explain some of the smell - but before that we had a wee budget where Dave and George seriously avoided telling us what a wonderful job they'd done racking up more debt than all previous labour Govts in history combined, missing their financial targets, demonising the poor and the vulnerable and blaming the ills of society on immigrants while trying to get us to ignore anything that might remind us of stagnant wages, zero hours contracts, tax cuts for millionaires, senior Tories involved in cash for access or any dodgy business scandals and removing from their website the 2010 list of  'judge-us-on-these-and-kick-us-out-if-we-fail' promises which they were so keen on sticking down the electorates throats to get elected in the first place.

Meanwhile Wallace, sorry, Ed Miliband has been desperately trying to be interviewed in one of his two {WTF} kitchens but most definitely sans bacon roll as he tries to prove that he's a millionaire public school educated man of the people who understands what it is to be poor and living outside of the M25. He's got street cred and the insight that brings, despite never having had any job that's anything even vaguely divorced from politics. He knows that Labour is good and that Tories are bad. He knows the only way out of Tory austerity is to wear the sack cloth of Labour austerity which looks like but won't feel like nasty Tory austerity because well, it just won't. They'll tax millionaires just a tad more and will have a mansion tax that any worth his fee accountant can avoid to make the NHS funded the way it should be. They'll cut tuition fees to £6,000 a year to prove they're on the side of 'yoof' but don't be unemployed or on benefits because their shadow welfare minister has warned Labour doesn't represent people on benefits, just people in work and that's why their called Labour rather than Tory Lite {TM} and remember that Labour Good/Tory Bad so vote Labour.

Both Tory and Labour parties have awakened to the likelihood of a hung - don't you think that's an expression worthy of so much more than a solely mental image - Parliament and the fact that us splittists Jocks actually never got back in the box after the referendum but have instead taken to responding to any kind of political poll that we're going to vote in our millions again and not in the kind of way that any self respecting Westminster MP would have us vote. ie for them. They've been outraged, betrayed, frightened, incredulous, frustrated, annoyed, dismayed, disappointed and hurt beyond belief so they've done what they do best and lined up the right wing MSM {mainstream media} to demonise us and ensure that everyone without a brain but still with a vote where it really counts - in Engerlund - knows that Westminster MP's good, SNP MP's mad bastards led by some wee lassie and that horrible Alex Salmond we all learned to hate during the referendum who are going to destroy the world or democracy as we know it at least {which to be honest isn't much of a democracy at all really} so you better give one of us an outright majority so we can all go safely back to doing what we do best - ignoring the Jocks, Jockland and anything tainted with even the faintest whiff of Jockery. Thank God for England, Queen Liz and St. George!

Yes, us rabid Nats in Scotland could well be sending a veritable tartan army of splittist MP's all the way to dear old Westmonster, all clad in tartan, claymores waving, woad on their faces and murrrder in their black hearts. They're going to eat English young, steal Big Ben and all the subsidised wine from the Palace of Westminster bars, make it law that everyone has to wear tartan and learn Gaelic and even {huge intake of breath} VOTE ON THINGS LIKE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. The bastards! Those nasty SNP monsters might even hold the balance of power since neither of the main parties looks likely to convince the voters who really matter - Yes it's THE ENGLISH again, do try to keep up - that one or other of them is good/smart/responsible enough to be trusted to run a government in anything other than blatant self-interest.

To be honest it's just not cricket, sorry, DEMOCRACY, except that it is, just not the kind of democracy we have told you to vote for, the traditional British kind that works just for us.





Scotland, HOW VERY DARE YOU!

Meanwhile back at the {B}ranch {Office}, or Scotland as they call it, the branch manager of {not}Scottish Labour {which is just UK labour with a see-you-Jimmy hat on and therefore not anything like a separate or proper Scottish only Labour party with it's own ability to decide/promise/deliver anything not approved by UKLabour and that's not fully devolved to Scottish Government control and therefore of relevance only AFTER being elected to control of said government which means also that nothing they are promising currently is of any point since they are not in government in Scotland, are unlikely to be this side of hell freezing over and even if they were, based on previous performance, wouldn't bother their Scottish backsides in delivering any of it anyway. Phew!}

As I was saying: Branch Manager J. Murphy esq, {he of the  'I'm going to keep on talking quietly and in reassuringly reasonable tones over every interviewer and around every question repeating ad nauseam any or all of the five magical mantras I've been taught by Master McTiernan of Babble so I don't have to really answer anything that might incriminate me, cos I'm so clever I can do this and none of yous is going to notice cos yous is aw as thick as mince and nowhere near as smart as me as I pull down my blackout glasses and stick my fingers in my ears so reality of each and every poll over the last 6 months canny get in cos we're no gaunny get wiped oot so we're no cos WE ARRA PEEPUL!} has been making the best of all his wee pals in BBC Scotland to make sure each and every utterance is given widespread and obsequious homage, acknowledging them for the manna from heaven they undoubtedly are. These are being laid out with simplicity and clarity, the only way us poor simpletons can understand things and are being repeated by each and every MP, MSP, Party Supporter and clone who gets near a newspaper, microphone or TV camera:

1 Labour Good/ SNP bad
2 Vote SNP Get Tory
3 The fact is the biggest party gets to form the Government.
4 Labour isn't going enter into a coalition with the SNP under any circumstances.
5 Labour Good/ Tory Bad

Now, let's take these one at a time.

Labour Good, SNP Bad.

This depends on your point of view or potentially grasp of reality. Unfortunately for {Not}Scottish Labour, it appears almost inevitable now, after 6 months of polls telling us that most people are prepared to vote SNP, that Labour and the Lib-Dems in Scotland are going to be either wiped out or simply  significantly stuffed after the election. But what's a wee annihilation or two amongst friends, right? Only the Tory vote has held up. SNP membership has soared to 103,000, while judging by the signs on TV from their conferences, Labour is dying on it's feet - members at conference appeared to be sitting with an empty seat between them to make them look more numerous than they really are while the Lib-Dems are basically left with a few ex MP's and remnants who are potentially zombies or so old they can no longer find an exit. Labour's staged meetings featuring on TV, like Gordon Browns last appearance, appear to be happening in private with bussed in support and party activists making up a crowd that means wide angle lenses are banned. Meanwhile SNP policy is viewed by voters as being more progressive, more representative of voter expectation and their leadership and candidates more trusted than the current mainstream, even in England. {holds in a smirk} Local council by-election results are backing polling as SNP candidates are winning these in similar ratio to polls.

Vote SNP Get Tory.

Sorry, this is just bullshit. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, SNP Party leader has been explicit. SNP will not facilitate a Tory Govt. No matter how many SNP MP's are elected they will vote against the Tory's getting a second term. This completely negates the argument unless the Tory's get an outright majority, which can only be won in England, where as usual Scotland's votes - no matter for which party - make absolutely no difference. The reality of this argument is an attempt to gain an outright Labour majority. Again, Scottish voters don't seem to want this as Scottish Labour MP's historically have been vote slaves for the UK party line which has meant Scotland's voice and needs are often ignored. Strong SNP representation without having to hold solely a UK party line is what most voters appear to understand guarantees the strongest influence in our interest. Sorry {Not}Scottish Labour.

The fact is the biggest party gets to form the Government.

Again, this is nonsense. The biggest party gets the FIRST CHANCE to form a government but the result isn't guaranteed. The party who can carry support to form A WORKING MAJORITY forms the government. Even Jim Murphy is saying the last time that happened was in 1924, but it still happened so he's proving his 'fact is' argument is rubbish. This was repeated for weeks before MSM began to challenge it {probably as a result of on-line alternate media pressure} Polls are showing no party having an outright majority is the most likely outcome. With a guaranteed SNP vote no matter how many {or few} MP's they have Labour will maximise opposition to Tory Govt, not ensure it gets in. That's an outright lie. The Tory party can win an outright majority, but that can only be won in England and therefore also can only be lost in England. Scotland's votes won't make one iota of difference. In actual fact as SNP candidates are likely to wipe out the Lib-Dem's in Scotland and by default carry their votes for a Labour Govt, the SNP makes a Labour Govt actually more, not less, likely.

A Labour/SNP coalition. Not happening. Nicola Sturgeon said weeks ago she couldn't see it happening. The red line of getting rid of nuclear weapons rules it out, likewise a formal 'confidence and supply' agreement. Issue by issue is the only realistic prospect. Listen to what {Not} Scottish Labour are not saying. They're very careful not to answer the question about them being prepared to deal on that basis. They won't rule it out.

Labour Good/ Tory Bad.

Again that's a perspective issue. I'd say Tory Bad/ Labour Not Quite So Bad/ SNP best option.

Better get ready. It's going to get really nasty in the next few weeks. {Not} Scottish Labour are fighting for their very expenses - sorry - SURVIVAL. They're going to turn feral very quickly.
Already they've wheeled out Gordy Broon again to make promises that anyone with any amount of common sense can see will never be delivered. £800 million a year extra for Scotland if you vote Labour? I don't hear Ed Miliband or Ed Balls agreeing to that and they will hold the purse strings if elected. If there are as few {Not}Scottish Labour MP's as it looks like there's going to be what's the chance of that happening?

Let's not forget this is the same Gordy who appeared a couple of weeks after the Smith Commission proposals were announced, just as Labour really started getting a pasting in the polls. to announce the proposed and put through proper proposals didn't go far enough and Scotland should get this, that and the next thing on top {even though {Not}Scottish Labour's Smith Commission proposals were the weakest of the lot} Do you remember any of the two Ed's coming out at any time since to say "We agree and we guarantee good ole Gordy's guarantee, guaranteed."

By the way, am I the only one getting even more confused every time a Labour or Tory MP says "I've /We've been very clear on that." I think my clarity sensor is buggered.

It's going to get messy. Better fortify yourselves folks.

Porage anyone?

It will never happen again - I PROMISE

 Listening to Jim Murphy repeatedly telling us that that Scottish Labour has changed makes me feel like I'm listening to a broken record. It's the broken record of a guilty man, the liar caught cheating, the wife beater saying "It will never happen again. I love you. Don't make me go. I LOVE you."

Like the faithful wife of an abuser, We've stayed too long. We've been loyal too long. We trusted you too many 'one more time's'. We've had our loyalty strained beyond breaking point. You've broken our hearts and betrayed our trust, not just once but over and over. You're a junkie addicted to power and the dealer's in Westminster. We've had all we can take and no amount of pleading will change that.

Like that abuser, you can't accept that we're going to walk. If you can persuade us just one more time to give you just one more chance then it will all be ok - for a while at least. As long as you get what you want then everything will be fine. Just the way it's always been, eh no? A change for a while at least until those urges begin to niggle again. Cold turkey in this unimportant wee Scotland before you start twitching and aching. How long before the sweats kick in and you can't resist any more. You know you NEED it. Is it fair that we deny it to  you. Isn't it our fault anyway? We MADE you that way. We've never given you what you truly want. It's our fault really that there's never been enough to satisfy you. We've never been that good to you. We're not enough for you. We've never loved you the way you deserved. Westminster is a sexier mistress, better dressed and with that undeniably heady scent of power. It's so... intoxicating. So addictive.

It's just not reasonable for us to expect that you should stay here is it?. Is it realistic of us to expect that we're your only love and your only focus? No - of course not. You've never promised that anyway. You never said you loved us or that you would stay forever. Yes, you made A VOW but it was never really about 'for richer, for poorer, until death do we part.' You only said you'd changed and you have. You said you'd made mistakes but you wouldn't make them again. You said you'd stopped listening but you'd realised that  and you'd changed. You're different now. Yes, if you stay and things do get better then we might give you our undying love. We might put you on a pedestal, make you First Minister and listen breathlessly to every utterance.

 You deserve nothing less after all.

But at the end of the day. We're just a wee wifey sitting in the kitchen making you your breakfast. We have weans to look after and washing to get done. And there's shopping to do. Not easy on our household budget when so much is out of our control. But we work hard to try and make it right. It's not glamorous work and it's taken its toll over the years. We were never supermodels. And we're no as young as we used to be that's true.

But we're still us Jim. We're just the same wee wifey we've always been. We need you. We need the things you promised and to be listened to. We need to be respected and we need you to put as much effort into this as we've done. There's so much to do and never enough time or money.

What's that Jim?

You say you've changed?

You say you're sorry?

What do you mean you can't do this any more?

What do you mean there's SOMEONE ELSE?

Oh Jim, I've met someone else too - and she's lovely: a great listener, we have so much in common, she makes me feel - important - like I haven't felt in years.

Your bags are packed and the divorce papers are in your jacket pocket.

Don't slam the door on your way out.


Porage anyone?

Red Sails At Sunset, Compass faulty, Navigator AWOL

 

 

Watching the conference of The Labour Party In Scotland - or 'The Scottish Labour Party/Scottish Labour' - whatever they'd prefer to call it, two things came to mind. It was overwhelmingly sad and overwhelmingly missing the bleeding point.

Overwhelmingly sad because it was a fairly small venue barely more than half full and because so many people in the audience looked as if they'd spent the night before in a serious bevvy session and had been dragged out of bed to go somewhere they really didn't want to be. I can understand that. With the latest in a long line of disastrous polling results staring them in the face so close to an election - even though, yes, yes, yes, the only result that matters is the result on election day - but as I said, with poll results like that they have little to be cheerful about. There's a mountain ahead and someone's just mentioned no-one thought to pack the hiking boots or the Bovril. And its cold. And raining. Hard.

Overwhelmingly sad because despite the evidence staring them in the face for the last seven years of an SNP Government in Scotland, despite two elections in that time when their vote share first declined, then crashed, despite that shocking crash being blindingly reinforced over the two years of campaigning in the referendum, they truly don't seem to get what's happened to them. It's like they've been decapitated but the head just keeps on talking, not realising it's disconnected and those legs aren't taking them anywhere anymore. Jim Murphy, their new leader, addressed his first conference in that familiar quiet, serious tone that seems to be the only one he has these days. To be honest as I listened I zoned out much of the 'poverty background/ man of the people/why I understand what is needed/ pearls before swine' speech filling and was transported back to sitting in the pews of my childhood Sunday Kirk, sermons droning interminably on with little for me to engage with, to catch my attention and keep it, Nothing to enthuse me. Nothing memorable, just the same as last week and predictably just what next week was going to be like as well. No wonder I jumped ship once I was told I was old enough to make a choice about attending for myself.

Overwhelmingly sad because there was no sense of responsibility for this. No accountability taken for leading supporters straight into a foreseeable, avoidable, catastrophe, for taking Scotland's vote for granted for forty years. No apology for that sense of entitlement, either here or down in Westminster , for betrayal of the fundamental principals of the Labour Party's existence, for abandonment of people's hopes and aspirations of a fairer society for the pursuit of power and influence, for scandal, sleaze and corruption. No reflection, no recognition and absolutely no apology. Only an underlying sense of desperation about 'How do we get back?' It's a good job the stage was bare, so much is there to sweep under the Labour carpet.

In a pre-conference interview Jim Murphy was asked if, as a Tory ex-Prime Minister had said, Labour should rule out a coalition with the SNP to gain power at Westminster. He responded dismissively that "We don't need to be told how to run Scotland." There it was yet again. All those feckin attitudes that have led to this point. You're not there to 'run' us you absolute twit. You're there to serve us. SERVE. US FIRST. US ONLY.

Overwhelmingly sad. After all this you just won't or can't see that Scotland has changed. The labour party is going to become insignificant. We're not going to lie down and let this happen to us anymore. Not by you, not by the Tories and not even by the SNP. If you won't represent us honestly then we will reject you. We will abandon you. We will not trust you and we absolutely will not vote for you.

Scotland understands what Labour should be. We understand its roots absolutely. We understand what it's values should be. The problem is that we don't believe that's what you or it stands for any more.

You have to find those lost principles, that missing integrity. You are in charge of a ship that has lost most of its passengers and most of its crew. You stand on the bridge and order a tweak here and there, a slight turn of speed and an adjustment in direction of a compass point or two to port . You need to grab the rudder and yank it around and you better set full steam ahead while you're at it. The lifejackets have been issued and people have abandoned ship. Shouting "Don't Panic! Don't Panic!" isn't going to work Cpl Murhy.

 

And so to Capain Mainwaring - sorry - Mr Miliband.


So much of the same from him. A professional speech by a professional politician. But no fire, no inspiration. No sense of belief. No clue. Yes, he spoke more of heritage and principles, of social justice and working families but without the conviction he actually held any of those principles at heart himself. He spoke like he knew he's stuffed. {"Let's not mention the SNP. Let's just make it about us and the Tories."} And worryingly too no recognition of the problem that 'Scottish" Labour faces. How do you square the circle of the clear difference between Scotland and England by voting for Labour. It's not enough to say that 'A vote for the SNP is a vote for the Tories'.

 A} It's not true.

And

 B} In case you missed the polls - We don't believe it

NOW.

Setting aside all the problems of  principle, integrity and conviction and lifeboats all at sea, lets talk about the blooming obvious when it comes to getting elected as Scotland's representatives.

How do you square getting working class Scotland voting for you when you have to win a majority of middle class voters in England at the same time, especially with Ukip pushing working class votes to the right too? If Scotland did vote for you how would our voice be heard? How much would Scotland's weight carry within the national party?

{Although it's the bleeding obvious don't expect any BBC interviewer to ask the question.}

The bleeding obvious fundamental of this election is that it's not going to be won in the centre ground of politics. In Scotland it's about the left but - and here's the rub of the matter - in England it's about the right.  Over the last thirty years English politics has shifted to the right considerably more than Scots politics and to get elected any party HAS to win a majority in England. It just will not work if that's not the case. That's why no matter how we have voted our voice doesn't get heard. Scots voters are looking at Labour and finding they don't believe a left-of-centre Scots MP contingent within the wider UK party makes a difference when UK Labour are chasing right leaning voters.

UNLESS:

That left-of-centre vote is from SNP MP's completely independent of Labour Central Party, completely and solely focussed on Scotland's interests.

OOOH. AND:

 if those independents are within the context of a hung parliament at the election......

Pass the porage please.