Scottish Labour grubbing around in the politics of the gutter

There is nothing quite so fierce as a Scottish mammy defending and protecting her offspring – especially if they are boys.  So god help all those who have it in for wee Geoff Aberdein this weekend.

Scottish Labour thinks it has a cunning plan to wound Alex Salmond over the Murdoch stuff by gunning for his Special Advisor, Geoff Aberdein.  It worked at Westminster, after all.  Following revelations at the Leveson inquiry about the extent of contact between Jeremy Hunt’s Special Advisor and the Murdoch Empire’s man over the BSkyB takeover bid, the poor wee SpAD was thrown to the political and media wolves in the hope that some fresh meat would sate their appetites.  Not a chance, it simply whets them.

But the circumstances are different in Scotland.  The reason Hunt is in the firing line, and the reason his special advisor had to go, is because he was supposed to be acting in a quasi-judicial capacity on this takeover bid.  They are in the mire because they have a clear and unequivocal locus in the matter:  he is the one responsible for taking the decision and therefore should have been far more circumspect about the extent of dealings with one of the bidders.  The First Minister had no such direct link.  His special advisor was only offering a few sweet nothings whispered in the Culture Secretary’s ear.  Lame justification or not – the First Minister was only doing his job: standing up for what he perceived to be in Scotland’s interests in terms of jobs.  An awful lot of Scots will shrug and wonder what the problem is.

Mine might be a Murdoch-free household but I’m a rare commodity in Scotland.  Last year, over 800,000 Scots read the Scottish Sun, day in day out.  Over 300,000 bought it on a daily basis, 20,000 read the Times, 50,000 read it on a Sunday and over 40,000 watch Sky TV, email on Sky and make phone calls thanks to Sky.  The launch of the Sun on Sunday?  Achieving a similar readership to its defunct predecessor, the News of the World, of nearly 250,000.  Has anything in the past week caused any of them to change their reading or subscription habits?  I doubt it.

Scottish Labour’s tactics show up the paucity of political nous in the party.  They’ve got so caught up in Operation Get Salmond that they’ve forgotten to think through the details and the increasingly personalised nature of the attacks are counter-intuitive.

I don’t think I’ve ever met Geoff Aberdein nor had any dealings with him.  But thon wee earnest face staring out at us from all our Sunday blatts this morning?  Bless.  Maternal instincts have been churned all round the country, at Labour’s expense.  And if attacking a young man who looks like he still takes his washing home every weekend wasn’t bad enough, the party has dragged Alex Salmond’s family into the row.

A “nyaff on the internet” might not be entirely within Labour’s control but the dissembling on who is responsible for comments on a Facebook group that supports Labour ignores what ordinary folk will take from the incident.  A young Labour supporter thought it funny to wish death on Alex Salmond’s 90 year old father.  The paltry response from official Scottish Labour sources indicate just how off-kilter the party’s political antennae are.

Worse is the briefing going on about the First Minister’s late withdrawal from BBC Question Time on Thursday.  Apparently, Labour doesn’t believe that having a family funeral to go to is a good enough excuse.  It reckons that he could have gone from Scotland to Romford in Essex for filming early on Thursday evening and got back to Kirkcaldy in time for the funeral of his aunt on Friday morning.  The inference is that Salmond used the family bereavement to avoid a grilling on the Murdoch stuff on UK television.

I’m astounded that Labour is allowing this to be cast around.  Is its staff team populated by androids?  Do they think that this plays well with the public?  Has it learned nothing since 2011?

Apparently not.  Scottish Labour had a great opportunity to play this Murdoch business well.  But by choosing to play the man and not the ball, they have not made a single shot on target.  The party appears blinded by emotion – what dominated its pitch in the last week was its visceral and irrational hatred of Alex Salmond.  The man as much as the First Minister.  He might be the ultimate Marmite politician but bringing his family into things is playing in the rough.

The other dominant feature was the barely restrained anger at Salmond and the SNP having stolen its electoral birthright.  Still.

Stephen Noon’s analysis that what plays to the political galleries sits rather more uncomfortably with the public is spot on.   Personalising things to this extent ignores the salient fact that a majority of those who voted last 2011 chose this man and this party to lead their country.  Attack him in this way and Labour is indirectly attacking the voters.

Trying to get folk sacked, allowing supporters to denigrate family members, attacking Alex Salmond for choosing family over politics:  Scottish Labour is grubbing around in the gutter and it smacks of desperation.

Scotsman’s shocking distortion of sleaze scandal

Another government, another sleaze scandal.

And we all roll our eyes wearily and say we expected no better from the Millionaires Club who just gave their wealthy pals a big tax boost.

This is a scandal created and set in Toryland.  £250k for three courses with Dave and Sam.  Nice to see the PM’s wife thrown in to seal the deal.

So how come the headline screaming from pages 4 and 5 of today’s Scotsman is “Sleaze:  dinner with SamCam and “mad Scotsman” Salmond“?  It is a gross distortion of what the report and story is actually about.

This headline suggests that the sleaze scandal involved the First Minister directly, that somehow Alex Salmond was complicit in this, that somehow – inexplicably – he had cut a deal with Cameron to get on this nice little earner.  The mind boggles, frankly.

But it is utterly wrong.  How Scotland’s First Minister ended up embroiled in this saga is because Peter Cruddas, the Conservatives’ former co-Treasurer, who was caught in the sting offering access to the Prime Minister in return for a six figure sum, was trying to impress his erstwhile donor.  In order to prove his credentials and his ability to mix it with the toffs at the top of the Tory party, Cruddas was caught on camera joshing that he and the Prime Minister had “jokingly referred” to Alex Salmond as “the mad Scotsman“.

Rightly, the FM has written to the PM suggesting that he explain himself.  Such behaviour and name-calling is unbecoming – or at least, getting found out is what is problematic.  This throwaway remark might just get David Cameron into a whole lot more bother, and rightly so.  If he thought of trying to make this one go away quickly, he reckoned without the tenacity of an SNP Government which never knowingly undersold the opportunity to remind the Scots of the awfulness of thon yins at Westminster.  Frankly, if this is how they think and talk about our First Minister in private, then they deserve all they get.

But it is the fact that editorially, the Scotsman chose to use the opportunity of Alex Salmond being mentioned in dispatches to attempt to give the impression that this episode of sleaze involved the First Minister.  How sly.

Ultimately, no party has completely clean hands on the matter of political donations.  The SNP had its knuckles rapped for auctioning dinner at Holyrood with the FM as a fundraiser.  A seemingly innocuous little ruse to raise money created the perception rather than the reality of sleaze.  In truth, only the most ardent SNP supporter would see this as something worth parting with hard cash for.  In years of relying utterly on private donations, this is the only episode to blot the SNP’s copybook.  Labour, Lib Dems and the Conservatives should be so lucky.

Despite vigorous attempts by them – especially Labour – to join the dots between Brian Souter’s largesse and his business and personal interests, they have failed.  Simply, because they cannot be joined.  What the muck-rakers have failed to realise is that Souter was a donor and supporter long before the SNP became fashionable.  The sneering at his offer in the 2011 election campaign to donate half a million pounds if ordinary members could match it pound for pound ignored the fact that match it they did.  And then some.

The truth about SNP funding is much more prosaic:  there are very few large cash donors and the success of its fundraising efforts in recent years owes much to making a virtue out of necessity.  When no one would touch the party with a bargepole, it relied solely on Obama-esque fundraising, gathering in lots of little amounts from its members.  Long before it became fashionable, small schemes spread throughout the party were initiated to spread the pain and maximise the gain.

Having never had to rely on big sums, it learned to make do with lots of little amounts instead – unlike the other parties, who have struggled when big funding streams have dried up.  Up to their necks in hock to their overdrafts, the major Unionist parties have become ever more desperate in their need to raise the readies.  Hence, this latest imbroglio.  Unless and until a shift is made to public funding of political parties, such scandals will continue to dog the image of politics on these islands.  And democracy will suffer.

But none of this excuses nor justifies the shocking attempt to embroil the First Minister in this episode.  The fact that the headline has disappeared from the online version of the Scotsman and been replaced with a more appropriate and indeed, truthful treatment speaks volumes.

No matter, the damage has been done.  A dwindling readership the Scotsman might have but still, over 30,000 people in Scotland opened their newspaper today to be given the impression that the First Minister was involved and that the SNP was also offering cash for access to major donors.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Here’s hoping that appropriate missives have been dispatched from the party’s lawyers.

Scottish Labour’s dead cat bounce

Do you know, Johann Lamont might just make a decent fist of this Scottish Labour leadership malarkey, if recent signs are anything to go by.

In this week’s First Minister’s Questions, she moved the political discourse on to solid territory for her.  She had a few well-sighted barbs too:  “As ever, the First Minister focuses on other people’s responsibilities and not his own. Never mind the budget at UK level—his own budget for jobs and growth could be done under the Trade Descriptions Act.”…. “To coin a phrase, when will the very man who launched a consultation document in a castle put people before prestige?”  And my favourite – and I suspect one we will hear again – “The First Minister talks about his new Minister for Youth Employment. That is one job for one woman, but what about the other 399 women who are losing their job every day under the SNP Government?”

This is bread and butter politics to the likes of Lamont;  it is far more discomfiting for the First Minister.  Despite the best efforts of the Scottish Government to focus on tackling unemployment, and youth unemployment in particular, the bad news keeps on coming.  Unemployment among young people and women is likely to rise for a while yet.  The reasons for this are complex and more properly rest with UK Government austerity measures and its inaction on creating growth.  But it is easy for Labour to join the dots and point the finger at the Scottish Government and its failings, whether real or imagined.  Whether folk will follow the line of thinking and also begin to doubt remains to be seen.

Focusing on women and women’s needs and issues in the labour market currently is a good place for Labour to be.  Johann Lamont with her political influences and traditions is on the political equivalent of a comfy sofa, the First Minister, meanwhile, is on a shoogly three-legged stool.  The SNP has always enjoyed an uneasy relationship with women voters – recent polls on referendum voting intentions show how much work the party has to do to capture this vote.  As many point out, the women’s vote is not homogenous but across all the age groups, backgrounds and other demographic characteristics, the inescapable conclusion is that support for the SNP and independence among women lags far behind men.

The party has always struggled to engage women effectively on its vision and aspirations.  The same applies across a whole host of policy areas, including economic and employment strategy.  Women as a key target group in the labour market are rarely mentioned;  the disproportionate impact of public sector cuts – something which Lamont honed in on – appears to have passed the party by;  few of its big hitters, the First Minister especially, ever seem comfortable when talking about policy and issues that strike a chord with women.  Lamont appears to have found this niche and if she has any sense, will continue to try to exploit it.

Moreover, despite being somewhat sidelined in recent weeks by Alistair Darling’s dazzling displays on the independence referendum, Johann Lamont is starting to forge a bit of a convincing and consistent line on the issue.  It still falls far short of credible, of course, but again the focus has been on trying to paint the First Minister into a corner, by calling for clarity on the question and accusing him of being a feartie by not having the referendum sooner.  It’s playground stuff but again, it keeps the doubters doubting and talks about the process in language people can understand.

Johann Lamont’s recent performance, however, is but one small glimmer of hope for Scottish Labour.   And ahead of the local government elections in May, any bounce such activity might create is probably a dead cat one.  Elsewhere, the signs are grim.

Eric Joyce clearly has some serious troubles in his life and in any other profession, he would be allowed to grieve privately.  His meltdown in the public domain will simply reinforce for many that Scottish Labour consists of a ragbag of unfit to govern types.  It should not be, but that is how it is.  The stunt in Stirling by Labour and the Tories in voting down a competent SNP minority administration’s budget and replacing it with one that not only cut the council tax but in doing so, threatened the living wage and breakfast clubs will get its reward at the ballot box.  Expect to see them hammered

In other Scottish Parliamentary business this week, Labour with a now rare morning leading the debate thanks to parliamentary arithmetic, decided to focus on transport issues.  Again.

“In our last Labour Party debate, we discussed the impact of Scottish Government policies on bus passengers. Today, we return to two more transport issues that are of crucial importance. In our second debate today, we will focus on support for ferry services, but in this debate, we will discuss the need to provide the rail services that Scotland requires and, specifically, the need to ensure that railway stations that perform a crucial role in their communities are not closed.”

And that is about as much as you need to know.  Nothing debates on nothing very much that amount to nothing at all.   Add into the mix the excoriatingly piss poor performance over the Scottish Budget, where Ken Macintosh managed to confuse even himself, never mind the listener, when interviewed about it the day after by Radio Scotland.  It all serves to show just how far the party still has to travel to get its head around the scale of its defeat last May.  Worst of all, it demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how to find the path to recovery, never mind get on it.

No, the party has further to fall and ironically, it will be the proportional voting system of STV in the local government elections which will save Scottish Labour from annihilation.  Just.