Labour's plan for the election is called 40-40, which means one policy discussed in each of the forty days between now and the election on the 7th May. It was elaborated for me in wonderfully pornographic terms by a Labour figure as being a bit like a bout of incredible sex.
Today marks the start of the slow, steady commanding thursts. Each one starting at the cockhead, and then driving in to the hilt so that the filly can feel the power, and forget all about all the other limp dicks who also want to ride her.
The tempo increases and the killing strokes begin as we thrust manfully into her yielding, willing, electoral flesh. Labour then puts spurs and crop to the electoral filly as the bugle sounds for the final charge.
Then on election day she rakes our back with her nails, her head rocking from side to side as she screams: "Yes! Yes! I'll vote Labour!"
In a nutshell, the working class on low incomes and people living in rented accommodation voted Yes by quite large margins. People who live in their own homes and high income earners voted No. There was also a clear religious divide, which this being Scotland is also very important. Members of the Catholic and Anglican Churches voted Yes, as did the atheists (Yeah!) On the other hand Church of Scotland people gave a majority of their votes to the No camp.
These figures may go a long way towards explaining something which we mentioned last night, namely that the SNP are basically dumping their old Tartan Tory policies and putting forward new ones that appeal directly to their new voting core. Unlike Labour in England, the SNP are not trying to toss a few table scraps to their core, they are inviting them to join in the feast.
It's not difficult to see what is going on. Reeves' comment was actually hedged with that many caveats that it was obvious to the astute reader that she wasn't really promising to put the poor back into workhouses. However, that is what the headlines suggested would happen which is why claimant groups were so outraged. Labour was obviously gambling that its claimant voting core would be able to read between the lines, or get a few nods and winks from the party activists on the doorsteps. Or it could be that Labour reckons that ordinary people have no option but to shrug their shoulders and troop off to the polling stations as usual to vote Labour. Certainly Reeves must have known what she was doing when she uttered those inflammatory lines which were clearly aimed at picking up a few nasty votes from the Daily Mailoid element.
This wheeze may work in England where working class people have no choice but to vote Labour, but it will not play in Scotland because the SNP is clearly now aiming at attract the votes of everyone who is either unemployed or under-employed.
Actually, all the SNP is doing is encouraging its army of young activists to get to work with their friends during break time and try to encourage them to vote for the SNP, something which is pretty bog standard for any party that actually has a youth wing. Alas for Labour, it doesn't.
It is quite possible that one of the reasons why Labour does not appeal to the young is the fact that McCann was arrested during the referendum for trying to pick a fight with a 17 year old SNP activist, something which is hardly likely to endear Labour to the youth of Scotland.
So whilst the SNP puts forward policies that are aimed directly at the urban working class, all Labour can do by way of reply is to howl like some deranged dog when faced with a full moon.
UKIP should be on the ropes right now, given the pounding they have received this weekend. The Janice Atkinson business when a member of her staff seemed to be engaged in dodgy dealings over expenses looked to me like the uppercut that would put the party on the canvas, and I was looking forward to watching the whole of Kipperdom reduced to public ridicule.
When I read the accounts of how Farage and his family were disturbed over a pub lunch by a gang of weirdos that included these two little darlings holding plastic dolls to plastic tits for reasons best known to themselves, my first reaction was that UKIP had gone along to a theatrical agency and hired a group of freakshow performers. It seemed to me as if it was the last, desperate throw of a dying party, and nobody was going to believe that creatures like this would be anything other than a put-up job by the UKIP press office.
How wrong I was, for these are genuine freaks who honestly believe that they have achieved something important today However, all they have done by terrorising Farage's teenage daughters is to turn the light away from UKIP's scandals and provide Farage with just enough public sympathy to start refloating his political ship.
If UKIP does recover from its self-inflicted wounds then today's idiocy will have a lot to do with it. I hope the people responsible are happy with that result, but I suspect that their limited sense of self-awareness means that they will not realise just how much normal people loath them.
In other words, a vote for UKIP is just as much a vote against these freaks as it is for UKIP.
This is just so very stunningly awful in so very many ways that I am not entirely convinced that it is not a fake. That said, Sergi Singh is the UKIP candidate in Hull North, so I suppose it could be genuine.
Whenever I see Esther McVey, the Tory MP for Wirral West, I always think nice body, shame about what's going on in the brain. Aside from getting involved in the usual dreary expenses scandals - in her case over misuse of House of Commons stationary - McVey is one of the senior figures in the war against claimants that the Tories have waged for all this parliament.
There is even a catchy song that has been composed and sung by Alun Parry to help do just that. It comes complete with the rather engagingly catchy refrain "The wicked witch of the Wirral's had her day" and can be downloaded at this link. Or you can watch it below:
I don't mind it when politicians dissemble, or even when they subject the truth to a wind tunnel test to see how much stress and strain it can take. What I do object to is when a party hack lies through his teeth and then dissembles to try and defend his lie. That's what Jim "Spud" Murphy did on Newsnight last night.
Spud claimed that "the biggest party gets to form the government," and that is just not true. The man who is sent for by The Queen to form Her government is the man who can command a majority in the House of Commons. Normally that is the largest party because that party has a majority, but it is the majority that matters, not where it comes from. Spud was at it again when he said that "it isn't the case that you add up the party that comes second, the party that comes third, the party that comes seventh," because that is exactly what can be done if those parties agree to vote together against the single largest party that does not have a majority.
Cameron as leader of the largest single party could try to hang on, but if Labour and the SNP have a majority of the seats between them and vote against him then he will have to resign. The Queen is then constitutionally bound to send for Ed Miliband if he can offer Her a government that commands a majority in the Commons.
If you want the Tories out, and want to see a government more to your liking come in, then you should ignore Spud's porkies and vote Labour in England and SNP in Scotland.
When I joined UKIP it was still able to present itself as a broadly based anti-EU front, and on that basis I was proud to shake Farage's hand in the run-up to the 2013 council elections. When Thatcher was summoned to join Hell's legions I quickly became an ex-Kipper and the people of Pendle Central were denied the chance to vote for UKIP, but one candidate in one ward does not amount to very much. UKIP could still pretend that they were trying to speak for the people on the estates who drank themselves into a happy oblivion when the news of the old slag's death reached them. Well not any longer, not after today.
Now it is clear that if you vote for UKIP then you are voting to keep the Tories in power. The Tories, the creatures who are lower than vermin, the party of the employer and the employer's man. Vote UKIP and keep Cameron - that's the deal on offer.
As a strategy to take votes off the Tories it might be a winner, as the sons of Alf Garnett really do seem to hate the Bufton Tufton element who rule the Tory roost. However, the wheeze will crash like a lead budgie on the estates where the desire for revenge for the 1980s is still palpable. Farage must know that, so his willingness to ignore the estates can only mean that he has written off the working class, big city, council estate vote.
In Scotland the SNP has realised that there are not enough people who have done well out of the post-1979 era who are willing to vote for a party that wants Scottish independence, so it has changed its policies. Instead of speaking to the old Tartan Tory element it now puts forward polices that are aimed at the traditional working class. This appeal to vote for a better tomorrow almost succeeded last September when the council estates voted Yes and the landed ones didn't.
UKIP seems not to have the political nouse to realise that it's middle class supporters who put leaving the EU above everything else are already in the bag and will vote for the party come what may. Nor does it have the wit to grasp something which the SNP quickly did, namely that the core Labour vote is very, very soft indeed. Policies that involve keeping the wages up and the management down would probably work for UKIP as well as they work for the SNP.
Instead, UKIP prefers to remain the voice of the crappier small towns, speaking for a demographic of men who wear their cardigans and ties at home to eat the traditional Sunday roast, prepared by wives who have cast iron perms and sour expressions.
The message to the cities is clear: vote Labour in England and SNP in Scotland. UKIP isn't interested in your vote and is offering you nothing other than more of the same from the Tories.
Labour's press office probably thought that it was a good idea to invite the hacks into Ed Miliband's home in the hope of humanising him in front of the punters. A nice photo opportunity of Ed and his missus stood in their ordinary kitchen slurping coffee as we all do. Sarah Vine is a Daily Mail hackette who came along and reported that the kitchen is a soulless place, perfectly in keeping with Miliband's soulless personality.
Big deal. I mean, who cares what Mrs Michael Gove thinks or what she writes for the delectation and delight of the Daily Mailoids? Anyone who married a man who comes over as an anally retentive toad can hardly complain about other people's shortcomings, even if she does try to play down the fact that she is married to the creep by using her maiden name to write under.
It would have all been quickly forgotten had another hackette not decided to help Miliband out by sticking her oar in:
So the house has two kitchens does it? Maybe what Jenni Russell called "the functional kitchenette" would be better termed the butler's pantry? You know, somewhere that the servants go to get the little nibbles for the family and their guests when it isn't dinner party night?
After all, Justine Miliband isn't short of a bob or several, given that she is a high flying barrister, so she probably leaves all the housework to menials. The house is worth millions as well, so it stands to sense that the Milibands have slaveys grafting for them, doesn't it?
Arguing that the Tories are even worse is not going to work, We know that Tories are rich bastards, that's why they are fucking Tories. Arguing that Labour has always had upper middle class types in its ranks such as Clem Attlee is likewise not a goer. Attlee may very well have gone to Haileybury and Oxford, but he was surrounded by men who had left school in their early teens and had then grabbed what education they could from a university's extra-mural department and their trades' union. Men who were gagging for revenge in other words, and who thought that they had got it in 1945.
The photo opportunity was supposed to make the Milibands look normal - that's why the servants' pantry was chosen to the shoot. The problem is that they are not normal, in the sense that they do not have the economic insecurities that the bulk of the Labour core vote has.
Miliband should just adopt the Attlee approach and not try to pretend to be something other than what he is. He will never be a man of the people, but he could be the man who gives the people some of what they want.
The problem is that since Labour has been pretty much taken over by the wealthy at the top, and the middle class lower down, would he be allowed to do that, even if he wanted to?
For his part, Ali accepted the idea of a divorce, so long as Aisha's family paid him back the dowry that he had coughed up for her hand, along with the money that he had spent courting her. He refused to deny that he is the proud owner of serious blue-veiner...
This is just typical of women all over. I had a girlfriend once who told me that the notion that it's not what you have, it's how you use it, was "a myth, put about by men with small todgers."
On the other hand I also had a friend who was a prostitute and she reckoned that small cocks were best because she couldn't tell if they were even inside her and all she had to do was whisper "Give it to me, big boy," to get the punter to shoot his wad. That said, I suspect that this was a commercial decision and was not reflected in the choppers she rode for fun rather than profit.
Still, the case of Aisha is proof, if proof were ever needed, than bloody women are never satisfied.
What do you think of this cartoon from the Guardian's Steve Bell? I must admit that it is moderately amusing, but not one of his best efforts. The reader's eyes take it in, his lips smile and he then passes on to the next item.
Unless, of course, the reader is a part of Scottish nationalism's Achilles heel; namely sanctimonious, self-righteous gittery of the highest order. As I write, the web is full of outraged protests at this latest example of waycism, and English bigotwee that is all directed at the poor Scots who labour under the heel of the wicked colonial rulers in London. Even Wings Over Scotland has fallen for this nonsense and its owner is usually far better than that.
Pathetic, isn't it? Not only is it pathetic, but these are the cries of losers, and by definition, life's little losers never get anything. Scotland is better than that.
Let me be honest, and remind you that I only moved up here two years ago. My first night in Edinburgh consisted of a chippy meal and then my first, but by no means my last, pint of heavy in the pub that would soon become my haunt.
The chips tasted delicious and I asked the bloke behind the counter to explain the secret. The answer was that they use beef dripping to cook with. That's right, proper beef dripping that I haven't seen in England for over a generation is still regularly used north of the River Tweed.
As for the pub, what can I say? It was and is a working man's swill shop, with a great masculine atmosphere and I was in the seventh heaven. England I am sad to say has poncified far too many of her pubs, but Scotland keeps them alive and kicking on almost every street corner. (By the way, if you have never glugged a pint or three of Scottish heavy then you cannot call yourself a drinking man. I recommend 80/- from the Caledonian brewery.)
The point here is that Scotland is the part of Britain that did not change after 1979, and refuses to change to this day. Northern England had to make its compromises with the South, because the bulk of the population is based down there, but Scotland is dominated by her central belt of industrial towns and cities. Put another way, Manchester had to accept changes through gritted teeth because Mancunians are a small minority in England, but Glasgow could give the two-fingered salute because Weegees are an almost dominant proportion of the whole country. So it's the middle class who will have to make concessions in Scotland to get some of what they want, not the working class.
So why the whining? Why the pretence that Scotland is a colonial territory made up of natives who get their arses kicked by English district commissioners? It reminds me of the whine put out by Hungarians in 1919 when they tried to distance themselves from Austria-Hungary's actions in the Great War. Or post-1945 Austrians who did their very best to convince themselves that they had actually not been enthusiast participants in Greater Germany. A friend of mine likes to tell the story of his late father-in-law who was a Dunkirk veteran. (Pause for effect) "He served in the Das Reich division of the Waffen SS." (Pause again) "But he was still at Dunkirk; just playing for the other team." So they are not all whiners, but there are enough of them around to irritate.
Once upon a time, Scottish nationalism did not adopt this whining tone of loserdom. Time was when members of the SNP would make it plain that Scotland was just as much a Mother Country of the British Empire as England. Maybe more so, when you think about all those Scottish administrators and soldiers who knew how to handle natives.
I am old enough to remember July 1967 when Lt. Col. Colin Campbell Mitchell ordered his Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to march in parade dress into Crater, a district of Aden where some British soldiers had been killed the month before. The tune they played was Mony Musk:
Clearly the empire cannot be restored, and nor do we want it to be: it cost far too much money to run towards the end, anyway. However, back then there was more than enough common ground to keep the British together under one roof. That has changed and if Scotland wants to repair the damage done since 1979 - and have revenge for it, let's be honest - then it is time for a divorce.
However, Scotland must not appear as the pathetic wife who whines about her husband's behaviour because all she will get is everyone's pity and nobody's respect. Scotland should take the view of the outraged husband whose wife has changed whereas he is quite happy to stay the way that he always has.
In other words: the best of the Britain that we all love is to be found north of the River Tweed!
Who is John McTernan? Well, he is Jim "Spud" Murphy's chief of staff, and Spud, in case you have forgotten, is the leader of the Labour branch office in Scotland. In fact, bringing McTernan in was Spud's first decision, once he became leader in January this year.
Back in late September 2014, McTernan was invited along to the Tory conference to take part in a panel discussion on popular capitalism, whatever that is.
Speaking about Thatcher, he has this to say about the old slag: “She changed the economic structure for good. As in forever. But also for good. It’s a good thing she did what she did.” He then went on to sing the praises of privatisation, saying: "There’s a far wider range of assets that are currently owned by the government which I would privatise. I would have privatised London Underground if I could have done."
If that hasn't made you cough up your coffee, then consider his opening remarks where he bemoaned the fact that half the population of Britain think that big business is a threat to the country, whereas only nineteen percent blame the unions.
Think about all this for a moment. In Scotland, a country that rejected Thatcherism root and branch, the Local Labour Party leader chooses a man like McTernan as his chief of staff. What does that say about Labour, and its plans for Scotland?
Simply that Labour are on the right side of the Tories and the wrong side of public opinion in Scotland.
A party that was swaggering to victory like a dog with two dicks - as the Tories did indeed swagger in the 1980s - would not issue pleas like this. They would be telling people how wonderful life was going to be in the Greater Britain that a vote for them would achieve. Instead they are reduced to a whining plea from Captain Underpants himself, begging Labour to please, pretty please, don't agree to any terms with those nasty sweaties north of the River Tweed.
With over eight weeks to go until the polls open, I have no idea who will win the bulk of the seats that are up for grabs. However, one thing is clear: the Tories are already accepting that it isn't going to be them.
As Labour slumps in the polls, the middle class have decided that they had better vote Labour to try and stop the rot. They don't have much choice because the Liberal-Democrats will be lucky if they save two out of their current eleven seats and the Tories, who hold one seat in Scotland, are bumping along on around fifteen percent of the vote. Since neither of them holds out much hope, the argument goes that the middle class should put aside their minimal differences with Labour and vote to keep the SNP at bay. Think of it as blue Tories voting for what has already become the red Tory party...
How can we be sure that Labour really is giving tacit approval to all this? Well, just look at the unguarded comments from some of their senior figures that the party has had to disown. Robert McNeill was the Vice-Chairman of East Lothian Constituency Labour Party until he was forced to resign over this graphic display he sent out to the world so that people could tell which party to vote for to stop the SNP. The fact that this scheme involves people voting against his own party and that this is against Labour's rules is not something that seemed to have entered his mind.
Former Labour MP George Foulkes who is now a member of the House of Lords sent this delightful missive out to his followers:
I could go on, but what's the point? The web is pretty full of these unofficial attempts to stop a left wing party from gaining seats by a party that still tries to pretend that is is the voice of the Scottish working class.
All this starts to make sense when we recall the contempt that more than one senior Labour figure has demonstrated for the working class over recent months. Last year we mentioned Kathy Wiles, who managed to survive one full day as the party's candidate for Angus until her loathing for the people whose votes she would need became apparent:
What has become clear from other questions that have been asked during
polling exercises is that those reliant on benefits (but not pensioners)
believe that they will be better off under independence, while those
working believe that they will be worse off- in other words working
households feel they will be required to foot the bill for the SNP's
left-wing welfare policies.
In other words, my earlier argument that Labour is on track to become the voice of Scottish privilege appears to have a lot going for it. I suppose we should just say that Labour will still represent the estates, its just that they will be the landed ones rather than the council variety.
Scotland seems to be undergoing a political realignment that nobody could have predicted just a year ago. It is possible that when the dust settles, the SNP will become the new champions of working class political interests north of the River Tweed, whilst Labour becomes the voice of the comfortable middle class.
Working class voters tend not to switch allegiance very often. In fact they are more inclined not to vote at all when the party that they identify with stops putting forward polices that meet with their approval. That said, occasionally a shift occurs which leads to another party taking a working class constituency, usually in a by-election, and when that happens the new party tends to hold onto the seat for many years. Rochdale was grabbed by the Liberals in 1972 and then held by them until 1997. Bermondsey fell to the same party in 1983, and is held by them to this day, albeit with a slight change of name.
However, the last time that a new party muscled its way forward to take over the representation of the working class as a whole was in 1918, when Labour emerged courtesy of the then hopelessly split Liberals. If the SNP manage the same thing against a Labour Party that is united then that would be an amazing political act, and all the signs indicate that Labour's vote will just collapse. Let's look at some of the reasons for this earthquake.
The first is that unlike England, Labour in Scotland did not undergo a social transformation in the 1970s. The graduates with their local government jobs who now dominate the English Labour parties are not replicated in Scotland. The Scottish party remained in the iron grip of the machine politicians who had always run it, and even though its membership declined nobody cared because they were still winning all the elections.
The party even managed to take seats off the Tories, as Jim Murphy, who currently manages the Scottish branch office proved in 1997 when he captured the once safe Tory seat of East Renfrewshire. This constituency is one of the wealthiest in Scotland, and the victory seems to have been partly due to the loathing that many Scots had developed towards the Tories, as well as the fact that under Tony Blair, Labour was actively courting the votes of the wealthy and privileged denizens of the leafier suburbs. The fact that his Tory predecessor was a nutter who was fined £200 for threatening people with a pickaxe, and following his defeat had to go away to have the voices in his head shushed may also have had something to do with the victory.
However, this zombie party could not stand up to a charge from the left, which is just what happened. As Labour under Blair moved further to the right to mop up all those suburban votes that left an enormous gap in the political spectrum which the SNP moved in smartly to fill. They seem to have realised that their hardline nationalist supporters would support them come what may, so the SNP began to offer things that working class voters found agreeable.
To be honest, it isn't all that much, but banning the sale of council houses, keeping Education Maintenance Allowance alive and dishing out bus passes to people when they reach 60 instead of making them wait until 65 was more than Labour was offering. Certainly policies and pledges such as these helped the SNP win an overall majority in the 2011 Scottish elections for a parliament that was specifically sent up to ensure that no party would ever have such a majority.
All that aside, what provided the final kick that knocked Labour's shambling corpse over was the referendum. It has to be admitted that the Tories in London played a blinder there, leaving Labour to manage the campaign for a No vote. It worked, but it worked against the backdrop of Labour people appearing on platforms with Tories, the party that had closed down Scotland's industries in the 1980s and which Labour's heartlands had learned to hate. The SNP jibe that Westminster was an out of touch elite that acted against Scotland's interests became more than just a bit of rhetoric: people began to believe it thanks to Labour's willingness to work with its supposed enemies.
So we are faced with a situation where Scotland could see the creation of a new two-party system, with the SNP representing the council estates and Labour speaking for the leafy suburbs.
As realignments go, this one is pretty earth shaking.
