Thursday 24 December 2015

Viceroy Muddle's Christmas Er Um Message

Yuletide Greetings, North British plebs.

Not to be outdone by her royal niceness, Queen Nicky of the Nats, or The First Minister as she insists on being called, I'm delivering my own Christmas message to the People of Scotland. (I hope you appreciate my use of that word, by the way, given that it's a notion my master despises with every fibre of his being. And he's not too keen on the word 'Scotland' either.)

So here we are at the end of another year, and what a year it's been. Conservatives up and down the land celebrated my triumphant return in the May General Election, gloriously humiliating the Nats in what turned out to be a miserable night for them, despite winning 56 seats.  I had no sooner celebrated my victory than I found myself summoned to Downing Street (or 'the opium den' as I like to call it) for a friendly chat with our Beloved Leader.

He was as cordial as ever.
Eating ice cream and visiting Biggar are only two of my onerous
official duties.
"Don't get up," he said as he breezed in.
"But my knees are starting to ache," I said.
The sound of his laughter did alleviate my suffering a little, however.
"Not to beat around the bush, I've got a job for you," he said, with his customary not beating around the bush. What a marvellous, decisive leader he is in every way. "The Coalition's up the spout now we have a majority. Do you realise what that means?"
"I don't have to curtsey to Nick Clegg any more..?"
He smiled sardonically and came out from behind his desk. "My dear Muddle..."
"It's Mun-dell..."
"Whatever." He grabbed my lapels and gave me an affectionate shake. "You won't have to curtsey to any of those Lie Bombs ever again."
"Er..it's pronounced LibDems, I think..."
"Let the historians worry about what to call them. They're finished. It's us now, only us. Nothing will ever stand in our way again. What I need to know, Muddle, is are you with us?"
Too choked to speak, largely because his hands were gripping my throat but also because of the emotion of the moment, I nodded my assent.
Here's me being especially masterful during Scottish
Questions, although I do need some help from my cabinet
colleagues to come up with the answers.
"Marvellous. Up you get then. I want you to take over at the Scottish Office now Fatty Carbunkle's out in the cold. Think you can handle it?"
"Er..um..."
"Good, well that's that sorted then."
"It's just..."
"What? Oh, don't worry, there's nothing to it. Stir the shit, keep us up to date on what Sturgeon's lot are up to and spout the party line at every opportunity. Oh, and for God's sake do a better job of leaking than Fatty did."
"I'll do my best, Sir."
"Good man. Now piss off, I've got real ministers to see."

So, thus anointed, I found myself with the onerous responsibility of keeping an eye on Scotland.  Luckily I had toiled under Alistair in the previous administration so I was no stranger to the role, but I hope to bring some of my own special effervescence to the job in the years ahead. Prepare to be..er, um...amazed.

Wednesday 9 December 2015

After McGonogall: The Forth Road Bridge Disaster

Twas in the year of two thousand and fifteen
Came about an event never foreseen*
The pride of engineering that spanned the Forth
(I'm not referring to the one built a century earlier for trains, of courth)
Came under the eye of a structural engineer
Who spotted a crack, and murmured "What have we here?"

Alas! To the not inconsiderable inconvenience of all in Fife
This spelt disaster - worse than loss of life

For this well beloved thoroughfare must needs be closed down
And all those hapless commuters find some other way to Edinburgh town.
In the corridors of Holyrood much wailing could be heard
For Kez, and Ruth and Willie thought this circumstance absurd
"We must have an enquiry!" their cries caused such a din
And the honest folk phoned Kaye Adams to voice their chagrin
But luckily for them old Eck had seen this from afar
And commissioned a second Forth Road Bridge for folks to drive their car
So the moral of the story is simple but no less true
Don't stick your bridge together with dodgy superglue.

Parts of the Forth Road Bridge have been missing for years.
*Turns out it was foreseen but largely ignored by Scottish Labour.

Wednesday 11 November 2015

Carmichael, the Pride of The Liberal Democrats

LibDem's sole Scottish MP Alistair Campbell banged to rights
Poor Alistair. 

It's come to something when a politician - a cabinet minister, no less - can't lie through his teeth to smear the opposition without getting his degrading comeuppance in the Court of Session.

What's the matter with these witch-hunting closet nationalists posing as constituents? Don't they know that politics is the Lying Game? It goes with the territory. You only have to look at Tony Blair and Nick Clegg to see how far it can advance a political career. No, Michael White and Sir Malcolm Bruce got it dead right: it's sheer vindictive lunacy to get all prissy about their MP's lack of moral fibre at this late stage of the game. 

And didn't he do the Right Thing, owning up once the election was over? Didn't he forfeit a hefty severance package in lieu of resignation? What more did these people want, blood? There's just no satisfying some people.

It's got to be an evil nat plot. 'A show trial' Tavish called it, and my God he's right.

But that's the nats for you. They come down to Westminster, all priggish and superior, with their principles and work ethic. Upsetting the cosy camaraderie and time honoured traditions, clapping instead of grunting, keeping their election promises. They let the side down. Politics isn't meant to be like that. A cabinet minister should be excused for inventing a leaked memo if it prevented even one of those filthy interlopers from winning a seat. Not just excused, hell he should be showered with honours and elevated to the Peerage. Such a selfless act of unswerving dastardliness is rarely seen in peacetime. 

But is the nation grateful? Sadly, no. 


Tuesday 10 November 2015

Whatever happened to the Labour Party?

The few remaining Scottish Labour voters.
Last night I watched the third reading of the Scotland Bill at Westminster, and have to say it was a frustrating experience. Watching it I found my frustration aimed mainly at the Labour Party, strangely enough. I say strange because they are not the party in power, they are supposed to be the Opposition to the tory government who brought forward the bill. And yet they seem to have become the main opponents of Scotland's interest at Westminster.

The thing is, you would expect the SNP to get a rough ride from the tories. By their very nature the SNP are going to vote against everything the tories try to do. But the attitude of Labour to the SNP is so perverse it's hard to fathom. So I find myself wondering, what has happened to the Labour Party to get to this position?

When I was young and first became aware of politics Labour were the main party in Scotland. Living in a working class area, there was always a Labour MP. I don't remember politics featuring in our lives apart from the run up to elections. Then it was a no-brainer. There were two alternatives: Labour/Tory and and tories were certainly not for us.

For some forty years or more Labour held Scotland as their domain. My dad used to say you could put a red rosette on a monkey and it would get elected in Scotland. (As we have come to see, this isn't too far from the truth, but that's another issue). The number of MPs might fluctuate according to what was going on in the UK - Thatcher did more for the Labour vote in Scotland than any of their own politicians - but nothing threatened Labour hegemony north of the border.

But then things started to change. Tony Blair won his landslide 1997 Labour victory on the back of promising a lot of things to a lot of people, one of them being a referendum on Scottish devolution. Having won so decisively he had to deliver, and the referendum result was a resounding Yes. 

Around this time I was doing a law course in Edinburgh, and another mature student on the course, a very bright and highly qualified man who ended up taking a job at the Scottish Office, casually noted one day that it was clear to him Tony Blair hated the idea of devolution. At the time I didn't understand. This was only a year on from Teflon Tony's brilliant election victory, long before his reputation had started to tarnish. Here he was, giving the people of Scotland their own parliament. How could anyone think he hated the idea?

But in the years since, I've always remembered those words because everything that's happened since has reinforced it. Despite appearances, Labour never wanted devolution. Forced to deliver it, they tried to make it as toothless as possible. Of course, at that time they ruled Scotland anyway, so it didn't matter to them so long as it did nothing to threaten their power base at Westminster. They were content to fill Holyrood with complacent also-rans, more concerned with pleasing No. 10 than delivering a real political force in Scotland.

The events of Blair's premiership, most notably the Iraq invasion in 2003, did a lot to undermine Scotland's faith in Labour. This wasn't helped by a mediocre performance at Holyrood, fraught with leadership changes and scandals. When the SNP scraped enough MSPs to form a minority administration in 2007 Scots began to see that Labour had just been coasting all those years. By contrast the SNP administration looked like a proper government of serious, competent politicians making changes for the better.

Back in the 70s the SNP were little more than a one-trick fringe party. Dubbed the 'Tartan Tories' (because they generally came from that sort of background) few people saw them as a viable alternative to Labour. But once in office they showed what they were made of, and it paid off. Far from being a one-issue party of grievance, here they were doing grown-up government, and doing it well. The next Holyrood election gave them an outright majority.

For Labour, still smarting from the humiliating defeat at Westminster the year before, this must have been galling. Hadn't they arranged the Holyrood constitution specifically to avoid any one party getting overall control? And the Nationalists! The horror!

To hear the Labour MPs speaking yesterday one would be forgiven for thinking the SNP's success has been down to some kind of mass hypnosis from which we'll all wake any day now. But nothing could be further from the truth. The SNP worked hard to earn the trust of Scottish voters. Coupled to that, Labour have reaped the reward of treating their former heartland with complacent disregard. Under Blair, up and coming talent was squashed or expelled, so afraid they were of dissent within the ranks. Some of that talent went to the SNP, shifting the party's centre leftward. Blair at times looked more tory than the tories. After all, wasn't it the tories who gave him a standing ovation when he resigned? And didn't Thatcher call him her greatest achievement? 
Labour's sole remaining Scottish MP practises his sneer in the mirror.

But the most catastrophic blow to Labour in Scotland came at the independence referendum. Labour showed just how politically illiterate they had become when they gleefully stood shoulder to shoulder with the tories to tell Scots they were too wee, too poor, too stupid to stand on their own. Insulting your constituents is never a good way to get their vote, as Labour discovered in May's General Election.

Which brings us to last night's debate. Evidently Labour have still not learned the lessons of May's election. Otherwise they'd see that attacking the Holyrood administration and the 56 SNP MPs will only alienate what little support they have left in Scotland. And with Holyrood elections looming next year, where a decent number of MSP seats are at stake, you'd think they would be conscious of that.

It seems the Party of the People doesn't have a clue how to appeal to the People any more.  Scotland likes its devolved government. The independence referendum was narrowly won with a dodgy bribe of greater powers, the 'near-Federalism' of the Vow. But Labour have other ideas.

You'd think, with so much ground to make up, they would be keen to show prospective voters that they can be trusted to deliver on their promises. But no, there was no sign of that in last night's debate, which from the get-go was a shabby display of Labour filibustering, lying and insulting the SNP.

Which seems odd, until you remember they never wanted devolution in the first place. While they ruled the roost they were prepared to tolerate Holyrood as a pointless talking shop. Now it's only a hindrance to their return to power. They will undermine it at every turn, and that's why they can't ever be trusted with Scottish votes again. At least, not until they have learned their lessons.