The internet remembers

Today at First Minister's Questions Kezia Dugdale again chose to pursue the matter of Michelle Thomson's business dealings.  She said:

Michelle Thomson’s company boasted that the increase in the number of people struggling to pay their mortgage during the recession was, and I quote, ‘a great opportunity’, and that if people were ‘emotionally distant’ they could ‘make a huge profit’.

So could I ask the First Minister – is preying on desperate people ever an ethical way to run a business?”

It didn't take an alert reader of Wings over Scotland long to find the original texts from which Ms Dugdale took her quotes, which paint a very different picture to the one Ms Dugdale was trying to portray.

So, very much business as usual for Ms Dugdale and the Labour party in Scotland.  Nothing of substance, no attempt to question the Scottish government on matters that would be important to their constituents, just smear tactics, and pretty hypocritical smear tactics at that.

The whole debacle tells us two things.  One is that Labour needs to wake up to the fact that pulling selective quote from articles on the internet will never work.  Someone will always find those same articles and prove that you have lied by taking things out of context.

Secondly, why is Ms Dugdale harping on about this matter at Holyrood when she is perfectly well aware that the matter is outwith the control of the Scottish government as it concerns a Westminster MP?  She would no doubt argue that it is legitimate to ask Nicola Sturgeon about this as she is the leader of the SNP, and there is merit in this argument.  However, Holyrood at First Minister's Questions is not the right setting, given that it is the opposition's chance to challenge the Scottish government on matters over which they have devolved control.  So, for the second week in a row Ms Dugdale has wasted an opportunity to hold the SNP to account over their record in government in favour of yet more smear tactics from the 'SNP Bad' school of politics.

The second thing also suggests that Ms Dugdale, despite her protestations, is still being controlled by Labour HQ in London, who don't appreciate the nuances of Scottish politics.

Clearly Labour HQ think that the way to avoid another wipeout at next year's Holyrood elections is to rely on good old-fashioned 'SNP Bad'.  However, like the boy who cried 'Wolf!', they will find that a large proportion of the electorate will have stopped listening to them, which is not going to help their cause any, especially if it turns out that they actually do have an alternative plan for governing Scotland in their manifesto.

Oh so subtle

It's Thursday so it must be First Minister's Questions at Holyrood.  Here's what happened:

Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson both spent their allotted time asking questions about the issue with Michelle Thomson, despite being told by the Presiding officer that it was inappropriate as does not relate the responsibilities of the First Minister in the Scottish Parliament. Both also referred to the investigation into the actions of Fiona Hyslop regarding a grant of £150,000 to the company who runs T in the Park.

Both Ms Dugdale and Ms Davidson behaved disgracefully and with all the subtlety of a flying brick, in a pathetic attempt to score political points.  Who exactly were they trying to impress? 

Ms Dugdale was playing host to Jeremy Corbyn today, who was visiting Scotland with the express intention of attracting voters back to the Labour party.  Does she really think that potential voters will be impressed by today's display of bitchiness?  Or maybe she thought Mr Corbyn would be impressed?  Quite frankly I would have thought he'll be on his way back to London despairing at the lack of talent in his party north of the border, and perhaps reconsidering his decision to allow Ms Dugdale a free reign to decide policy for the Scottish branch.

As for Ms Davidson, as Nicola Sturgeon pointed out, she represents a party who claim to be the party of law and order.  Why, then, did she drive a coach and horses through the presumption of innocence pending the results of an investigation?  Again, ordinary voters are not likely to be impressed by this little display.

I have not yet made up my mind on the Michelle Thomson case, or indeed that of Fiona Hyslop.  However, it's safe to say I won't be relying on most of the mainstream media to report the facts accurately, given that most of them display an apparently visceral hatred of the SNP.  Apparently, however, Ms Dugdale and Ms Davidson accept whatever the newspapers (or indeed their advisers) tell them, which is not a desirable quality in a leader one might think.

Come home to Labour

Yesterday the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell gave a speech to the Labour Party Conference in which he said that Scottish voters who are against austerity should 'come home to Labour'.  In support of this he said

Let's be clear, the SNP has now voted against the living wage, against capping rent levels and just last week voted against fair taxes on Scotland to spend on schools.

A damning indictment, one might think.  What more reason would people need to vote Labour?

As ever, the devil is in the detail.  It turns out that the things that the SNP voted against were amendments to motions being debated in the Scottish Parliament, which is not quite the same thing that Mr McDonnell implies.  Evidently he, like Jeremy Corbyn, is being briefed by people from the Scottish branch of the Labour party, most likely Kezia Dugdale and/or Ian Murray.  You'd think they might be realising about now that the information they are being given is not entirely accurate.  The problem they have, however, is the people in Scotland are more aware of such shenanigans than they might have been prior to the referendum.  Which bring us neatly to the second issue.

It's becoming clear that Labour in Scotland has not yet learned the lessons of indyref and the General Election.  They still clearly believe they are entitled to expect votes from the Scottish Electorate without doing anything in particular to persuade people of their case.  While the Labour party might once have been the natural home for Scottish voters because of its support for the working classes, those days are long gone, ever since Tony Blair and the 'New Labour' revolution.  Nowadays Labour is really the party of keeping the chosen few in a well-paid career, whether that's at council, Scottish Parliament or Westminster level.  And worse, it's become obvious to the Scottish electorate that that's the case.

Kezia Dugdale announced at the party conference yesterday that she intends her party to stand on a pro-enterprise platform in the forthcoming Holyrood elections, at the same time that Mr McDonnell was announcing a review of economic policies, including measures to shift the tax burden away from middle and low-earners and a 'Robin Hood' tax on financial transactions.  Clearly Ms Dugdale is sticking with the Blairite model of Labour, while Mr McDonnell is more of an old-fashioned Labour politician. I can't see how the two are going to square that particular circle, and it will be an interesting test of just how autonomous the Scottish branch of Labour will be permitted to be.

If Labour want to avoid another wipeout at the Scottish General Election they are going to have to learn how to actually campaign for votes, rather than just telling the voters to 'come to their senses' and 'come home to Labour' without actually providing a compelling set of reasons to do so.  Mr McDonnell said he was devasted by the results in Scotland back in May.  On current form, he should brace himself for more disappointment next May unless his Scottish branch office up their game considerably.

A house divided.

Following on from my review of the book 'Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided', I came across this article in the Guardian, which has an in-depth inside story of Jeremy Corbyns leadership campaign.  Reading it, I was very much reminded of the Project Fear campaign, as it appears to have been based on a similar foundation of winging it, chaos and Labour's habit of in-fighting.  Even now, one of the first things that Jeremy Corbyn mentions at the Labour Party conference is that he doesn't intend to be pushed out by his opponents within his own party and fully intends to become Prime Minister at the next election.  Confidence-inspiring it isn't.

Mr Corbyn was on the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC this morning giving an interview, during which he said that the SNP are responsible for privatising Calmac, privatisation of ScotRail, cutting college places and privatising services, all of which claims are expertly demolished by Wings Over Scotland.  Mr Corbyn admits that he doesn't know much about Scottish politics, but it might be a good idea if he didn't rely on Kezia Dugdale for his information, which always boils down to 'SNP Bad', as demonstrated this morning.

Ms Dugdale herself  is blaming the previous four leaders for Labour's troubles in Scotland.  She says that Labour's problem has been that it has listened too much to what the voters wanted but has not translated that listening into action, something which Ms Dugdale intends to remedy during her tenure as leader.  She intends that the party in Scotland should actually make changes that the voters want rather than just listening and doing nothing.  As evidence of this she points to

new conference arrangements giving more say to members, reopening regional candidate selections to bring in fresh talent, and reformed portfolios for her front bench team.

These are all very fine, but they are really of interest to political activists, not your average voter in the High Street.

All this talk of listening and acting is quite reminiscent of Jim Murphy in his 'policy of the day' phase during the General Election campaign.  This resulted in policies such as wanting to change the law which currently band alcohol at football matches and the like.

Really this goes to show that Labour still haven't learned their lesson in Scotland.  Rather than knee-jerk responses and vague sentiments such as

We stand for a Scotland where every young person can get on in life, no matter how much money their parents have. I will change my party so that once again, together, we can change our country.

they really need to start thinking about what they stand for and what policies they therefore need to implement to achieve that.  They also need to sort out their internal politics, whether by putting together policies they can all agree on or by splitting into two parties.

It's said that a house divided against itself falls.   Labour's current status is very much of a house divided against itself, and the fall will not be long in coming unless they can find something to agree on.

Book Review - Project Fear by Joe Pike

I've just finished reading Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided by Joe Pike.  This is Mr Pike's first book, and a very good read it is too.

The book covers both the Better Together campaign from the referendum and the General Election campaign which took place between the referendum and May 2015.  It features material taken from interviews with many of the key players in both campaigns and provides a fascinating insight into the shambles that was the Better Together campaign and the election campaigns of Labour, the Libdems and the Tories in Scotland for the General Election.

The overriding impression left by the section on the Better Together campaign is that it won the referendum more by good luck than anything else.  The organisation appears to have been akin to herding cats, with people like Gordon Brown insisting on doing their own thing regardless of what the Better Together campaign as a whole wanted to do.  To be honest it doesn't tell us anything we hadn't already inferred about the campaign, bur it is interesting to see how it was viewed by the participants. 

There was one anecdote about how, when the going got tough, Jackie Baillie would send out for an order of 60 cakes from a local bakery to cheer everyone up.  On reading this, the first thought that popped into my head was 'I wonder how many people she was buying them for?'.  Does that make me a bad person?

The Better Together campaign seemed to be to be overly reliant on focus groups, polls and spin doctors,  pretty much overlooking the grassroots campaigning that was the hallmark of the Yes campaign.  They won on the day, but not by nearly as big a margin as they had expected.  I think this is at the root of their constant calls for reassurance that there will not be another indyref any time soon.  It was too close for comfort, and subsequent events have made another win for the Unionist side look iffy to say the least.

The second part of the book covers Jim Murphy's disastrous spell as Labour leader in the period from the end of 2014 to May 2014.  To be fair to Mr Murphy, he did have an uphill struggle to deal with, and the fact that he failed is not entirely of his own making.  However, the book does demonstrate that Labour in Scotland were in deep denial about the erosion of their support since 2011, hence their utter shock when they lost 40 of their 41 seats in the General Election.  Even now, I think that many of the senior Labour faces are still in denial, and employ phrases such as 'when the voters come to their senses'.  This is, I think related to the fact that many of them had grown so used to people voting Labour by default over the years, they had no idea how to run a campaign and instead relied on the fact that they had spent so much time being the local MP.  Many of them had no plan for losing their job.  Margaret Curran had a plan apparently - she said she wanted to open a gay bar on Ibiza named 'Margaritas'.  Be interesting to see if she actually does it.

Overall I very much enjoyed reading this.  There was a hint of schadenfreude, but it was also fascinating to see that many of the things that Yes side had inferred about the campaign were true, and sometimes were even worse that we thought.

Highly recommended.  I would be very interested in a similar book about the Yes side.

And they're off

Judging by the latest announcements, the race for the Scottish General Election next May has begun.  Yesterday Kezia Dugdale announced that The Labour Party in Scotland should have a discussion about whether Labour MPs and MSPs should be free to campaign for independence in the event of another indyref.  Then, today, Willie Rennie has said that senior Liberal Democrat MPs will be free to campaign for independence next time around.

It's an interesting move from both.  Last time around both parties were heavily involved in the Better Together campaign, on the basis that they supported the Union.  Where does this latest move leave them?  One would think it will be very confusing for their supporters if some of them are campaigning for indy and some are campaigning for the Union, never mind for the public at large.

It's a very interesting move.  They have evidently been paying attention to the recent polls, some of which have shown a slight majority in favour of independence if another indyref was to take place tomorrow.  There have also been polls that show that a majority of Scots want another indyref within 5-10 years.  Taken together, Labour and the LibDems can clearly see which way the wind is blowing and want to hop aboard the bandwagon in the hope of avoiding another embarrassing wipeout next May.

Meanwhile the SNP are following a rather interesting strategy.  Nicola Sturgeon has been actively pushing for Scotland to take Syrian refugees, to the point where some refugees, when asked which countries are likely to help them, names Scotland amongst others.  The SNP have also called for Scotland to have its own representation within Europe, something that is not likely to be looked upon with favour in Westminster.  Evidently one of the lessons learned from the last indyref was that in the international arena, Scotland was not well-understood to be a country in its own right rather than just a region of the UK.  This, of course, puts an entirely different light on the situation in comparison with, say, Catalonia.  By raising Scotland's profile as a country, the SNP appear to be aiming to get better international support the next time around.

Hope Over Fear Rally 19/09/2015

Fantastic day, met many old friends, enjoyed the speakers and the bands.  The atmosphere was joyous and friendly, lots of happy smiling faces.

Some pics from the event:

These were taken around 12 noon.  Even then, there were a few more than the 1500 claimed by the BBC

A selection of flags were flown...

...including two Union flags, which you can just about see at the back of this picture.  They wilted in the face of mass saltires being waved at them.

People came in all shapes and sizes

The fashion for traffic cone headgear is becoming a thing amongst Glasgow statues

And the prize for best placard of the day goes to...

Finally, with a roar like a primordial beast that echoed round the Square, Bikers for Yes