Miliband's brain fart has probably cost him Scotland

I suspect that Friday 30th April 2015 was the night when Labour threw in the towel as far as Scotland was concerned and accepted that it had to take the hit next week. That or Ed Miliband had a brain fart of monumental proportions.

If you watch the video clip which has kindly been made available by Wings Over Scotland for us, you can see that Miliband reiterated what has been Labour's policy for an age or more, which is to say a week or two for the rest of us. He said that Labour would not enter into a coalition with the SNP, nor would they do a "deal" with the Scottish party.

He then confirmed that a deal is a supply and confidence arrangement, which left his audience under the impression that everything had been ruled out. Certainly that is the way that Scottish social media are reporting it, and they are outraged by what seems like a betrayal from the leader of the main British anti-Tory party.

However, if you think about it, Miliband was not ruling out all types of deals. For instance he was careful never to mention case by case arrangements, which is how the Scottish government operated until 2011 when the SNP won their first ever overall majority. It's messy, and supply and confidence would be better, but if that is the way that Labour wants to proceed then that's the way it has to be.

You may say that this is over analysing the use of language, but then just remember how Bill Clinton got away with telling porkies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He denied having sex with her, which was sort of true as his defence attorneys had conveniently got the judge to agree to a check list of definitions as to what sex actually was. Thanks to that, having a girl on her knees sucking his cock did not count as sex.

Then we had the whole debate about what "is" means. He had stated to his aides, "There's nothing going on between us," which of course was the literal truth as he was sat in the Oval Office talking to them at that moment, not having her deep throat him. You see? It's the difference between "is" and "was" and that was enough to save Slick Willy and his willy.

Compared to all that, Miliband's strangled use of language last night comes over as an exercise in straight talking, but I wish that he had not felt the need to go into political speak. I wish he had said something like the following:

 Look, we are all civilised people and we all know that Tories really are lower then vermin. We have to keep those creatures as far away from power as we can so that we can all enjoy a better future, but unfortunately the Scots don't believe us. They remember Blair and how traditional Labour communities were left to rot, so they are voting for the SNP as a safety net. They don't believe that Labour has changed, but I can assure you that it has. We will work with the SNP in the short term so that the trust of the people of Scotland and the rest of the country can be regained.

Had Miliband done that he might even have regained some trust in Scotland before the election and saved some seats. As it is, the SNP is now pretty much odds-on to grab all Labour's seats, and probably take all the others as well, in a kind of two-fingered gesture to Westminster.

I am not quite sure what Miliband's strategy was last night, so will leave it as a brain fart, something which we all have from time to time.