Scottish labour

When is a disaster also a miracle? When it allows Scottish Labour to simultaneously endure its worst result since 1931 and live to fight another day, that’s when. Yesterday’s ComRes/ITV poll is the best news Labour has enjoyed in months. That’s how grim it has been for Labour lately. A poll of voters in 40 Labour constituencies which puts them six points behind the SNP may not be much of a lifeline but it’s the only lifeline available to the erstwhile people’s party. It will have to do. Sure, this poll suggests the SNP could take as many as 28 Labour seats meaning that the nationalists would, probably, win something like

Earlier this month the Labour party were accused of not including pictures of Ed Miliband on campaign literature out of fear that the mere image of their party leader could scare off voters. Now Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy appears to have gone one step further and simply not mentioned Labour at all. Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, claims that campaign leaflets for Murphy fail to mention the Labour party once: I get @JimForScotland leaving Miliband off his leaflet but why has he left off @scottishlabour? Not a single mention. pic.twitter.com/FenbKEf774 — Ruth Davidson MSP (@RuthDavidsonMSP) March 29, 2015 With recent polling by Lord Ashcroft predicting that Murphy will hold on to his East Renfrewshire seat

‘Would you like a glass of pink champagne?’ asks Alex Salmond at 3.30 p.m., sounding very much like a man settling down for the afternoon. It’s Monday and Scotland’s former first minister has cause to celebrate. He spent the previous day musing on television about the price he’d demand for the SNP supporting Ed Miliband in the Commons, and his thoughts dominate the front pages. There’s plenty of outrage at the idea of the SNP toying with England, and outrage is just what he wanted. So champagne it is. He has found himself an unlikely star of the Tory election campaign; the party this week released a cartoon showing him

What a load of mendacious balls everybody talks about Scotland. It’s like a disease. It’s like, you know how they say Ebola probably started in some festering bat cave in Guinea? Well, the referendum campaign was that cave. We had secret oilfields and fantasies about the NHS and endless guff about austerity being done for evil Tory fun, and the VOW the VOW and, dear God, the relief when it ended. Only it didn’t end. Instead it spread. And it set the tone. People talk now, for example, about an SNP/Labour coalition. As though this would make sense, when they must know it wouldn’t at all. As though Ed Miliband

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/the-snp-threat-to-westminster/media.mp3″ title=”Alex Massie and Sebastian Payne discuss what an SNP victory will mean for the union” startat=42] Listen [/audioplayer]Anyone seeking to understand the strength of the SNP should look to those parts of Scotland where the party is supposed to be weakest. At the last election, the nationalists took just under 10 per cent of the vote in the Scottish Borders. This year, Tory canvass returns suggest the SNP may treble its share of the vote in one of the most staunchly unionist seats in Scotland. For months, opinion polls have made unremittingly gloomy reading for unionists. The nationalists are heading for a victory on a scale still not

After the Scottish referendum campaign, the Union could probably have done with a period of calm. But it is not going to get it. Who gets to form a government at Westminster after the next election could turn on what happens in Scotland and how many seats the SNP wins. This fact is making both Labour and the Tories behave in ways that are damaging to the Union. Jim Murphy, the new leader of Scottish Labour, has decided to try and show that he is prepared to pick fights with London too, in the hope that will take some of the wind out of the Nationalists’ sales. Hence his deliberately

The dramatic rout of Scottish Labour continues. Polls suggest the SNP will take 55 out of 59 seats and of the 14 constituencies surveyed by Lord Ashcroft, only Glasgow North East is set to remain in Labour hands. Such political collapses are rare in UK politics – so what’s going on? Prior to 2011, the dividing line of Scottish politics was ‘to be or not to be’ Labour. This was a huge advantage to a party which, faced with split opposition, managed to win 69% of Scottish seats in 2010 with just 42% of the vote. The singular success of Alex Salmond was, first, to turn the SNP into the clearest and most credible opposition to

There are still perfectly reasonable, thoughtful Labour MPs who sincerely think their party has a good chance of winning a majority in May, even though most of their colleagues are reconciled to being the largest party. I’ve found more of them in Parliament in the past few weeks than I have found Tories who think the same about their party. But today’s Ashcroft poll may well mean that the verbs in that first sentence have to change into the past perfect. There were still perfectly reasonable, thoughtful Labour MPs who sincerely thought their party had a good chance of winning a majority in May. Then the Ashcroft poll came out,

How far will Jim Murphy be allowed to go? Yesterday, the Scottish Labour leader proposed funding extra nurses through the Mansion Tax — something his colleagues south of the border aren’t particularly happy with. On the World at One today, the Hackney MP and potential London Mayoral candidate Diane Abbott attacked Murphy, and at first forgot his name, for ‘jumping the gun’ on the Mansion Tax. She argued London will be unduly hit by this policy and the super-wealthy will avoid it: ‘I’m very surprised John…Murphy’s making these boasts. I support the Mansion Tax in principle, I support the union and redistributive taxation but there are two big problems about

Jim Murphy has been elected leader of the Scottish Labour party. He defeated his more left wing rival Neil Findlay with 55.59 per cent of the vote to Findlay’s 34.99 per cent. Kezia Dugdale was elected deputy leader. Murphy is a far more formidable politician than his predecessor, Johann Lamont. But he faces a mighty task. A YouGov poll of Scotland ahead of the UK general election, published this morning, finds the SNP on 47% with Labour 20 points behind. If repeated at the election in May, and assuming a uniform swing, this would see Labour lose 34 of the 41 Scottish seats that it won in 2010.    However, Murphy

Nearly 20 years ago, during one of the many impasses on the road to ‘peace’ in Northern Ireland, Gerry Adams reminded his opponents that the republican movement would set the terms of any agreement. The IRA reserved a power of veto. ‘They haven’t gone away, you know,’ he said. Scotland is not Ulster, of course, but the Scottish nationalists haven’t gone away either. Anyone who thinks the referendum settled this country’s constitutional future hasn’t been paying attention. The long war continues, albeit — and mercifully — in figurative terms. If anything, defeat has encouraged the nationalists to redouble their efforts. The SNP is the only political party in Scotland that can

Fight! Two senior Labour MPs locked horns yesterday over the Scottish leadership contest. Ivan Lewis and Tom Watson scrapped after the latter wrote a piece endorsing left-leaning Neil Findlay for the leadership. Lewis tweeted shortly after Watson promoted his piece that ‘it’s essential that Scots decide best person to be leader of Scottish Labour. Others interfering not in the interests of the Labour Party’. Watson took this as it was clearly meant and dived straight in with a retort: ‘Presumably you’d rather they quietly elect your candidate whilst we all watch. Plus ça change.’ This is ostensibly a debate between the two men about rival candidates in the contest for

What’s the most significant political story of the week, Ukip winning Rochester or Emily Thornberry’s resignation? Well, I suspect, it might be neither of them and that the really big event this week happened north of the border, Nicola Sturgeon being sworn in as First Minister. For the new SNP leader is riding a quite remarkable wave of popularity. Right now, she’s addressing a rally at the Glasgow Hydro, a 12,000 seat venue that she sold out faster than Kylie Minogue—what other politician in Britain could hope to do that?   As I say in the column this week, what makes Sturgeon’s popularity all the more remarkable is that she

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Alex Massie discuss Scotland’s new First Minister” startat=730] Listen [/audioplayer]‘She sold out the Hydro arena faster than Kylie Minogue,’ said one awestruck unionist of Nicola Sturgeon this week. Scotland’s new first minister has come into office on a tide of support that many in Westminster find hard to imagine. Not only is she packing out concert venues, her party is also consistently scoring above 40 per cent in the polls. If she can keep this momentum going, she will rout Scottish Labour at the next general election. Defeat in the independence referendum has not halted the nationalists’ momentum — quite the opposite. The party stands

Even the po-faced Associated Press (video above) couldn’t but describe as ‘toe-curling’ Ed Miliband’s encounter with a homeless hijabi. Pundits agree that Ed appeared ‘terrified’ of the beggar in Manchester. Mr S was there, however – on unrelated business, of course – and can confirm that the opposition leader really did only have 2p in his pocket at the time. (Why on earth would he carry more?) Your correspondent was otherwise engaged, however (in discussion with my equine consultant) in the moment this photo was snapped: What could have been on his mind? Or that of shadow transport secretery Mary Creagh, for that matter, as they headed into the Manchester town hall? The new Scottish

While watching Scottish Labour leader frontrunner Jim Murphy launch his campaign today, you might be forgiven for thinking the teetotaller has been hitting the bottle. The bottle of hair dye, that is. There is a noticeable change in tone from when Murphy was a minister in the last Labour government. Mr S doubts that will be the only thing the former right-wing Blairite will be lightening in the coming weeks too.