Westminster - as bad as each other
I was going to have a go at the Tories for their blatant Islamophobia and at Labour for allowing regular claims of anti-semitism in the press to go unchallenged.
Then I thought: No, let's just consider how the UK has ended up with not one but two sets of utterly duff politicians fighting it out to become the government at Westminster.
The Tories seem to rely on being the automatic party of government. They got this from Thatcher. But Thatcher's lot - sneaky and mendacious as they were - at least went about the business of government with some degree of efficiency and with a few ideas to their names. Lousy ideas but still. Now the Tories appear to have no ideas, except what they pick up from Donald Trump. And certainly no principles. They are just on the make. They've turned Westminster into a place for millionaires to 'footer aboot,' as we say in Scotland, saying whatever comes into their heads as long as it's anti-Labour and somehow not quite managing to plan for anything: there's certainly no plan for leaving the EU and no philosophy for the politics of the future should Brexit fall apart (as it is now doing). Instead, they play at using the press and their telly friends to attack Labour.
You'll remember Labour. Once upon a time they had a leader called Hugh Gaitskell. He was a man of principle and he died very suddenly and quite young in the early 1960s, leaving the Labour party to fall into the hands of the biggest bunch of chumps you'd find in a long day's walk: Wilson, Brown, Callaghan. Not one of them had a clue how to sort out the UK economy (nothing new there then). There followed years in what was called 'the wilderness.' Despite it all, Labour managed to come up with another clever, affable and presentable leader, John Smith. He too died very suddenly in the 1990s, to be replaced by a collection of back-stabbing but smart operators: Blair, Brown, Darling, Mandelson, Straw, etc. And then came the Banking Crisis of 2008 and Labour panicked and let the Tories back in.
Unfortunately, the back-stabbers haven't gone away: New Labour is still hanging about, attacking anyone who isn't New Labour, especially Jeremy Corbyn. It's as if Labour have learned nothing and forgotten nothing: it hasn't occurred to them that the Tories may fight like cats in a sack from the day they win a general election until the day they have to fight the next one, but they will always rally enough to make Labour look stupid. And they have the press behind them.
Of course, I don't care what happens with either the Tories or Labour in Scotland. Neither party is going to make a big comeback here. The days are long gone when a "dug wi a rid rosette" could get elected for Labour and a clubbable man who'd been to the right school could get elected for the Tories. These parties are not electable here. Not until they remake themselves as a Scottish Labour or Conservative party after independence - probably with different names and a whole new philosophy.
Scotland now has a highly educated population with an acute sense of political awareness. It's more difficult to fool us now. We may be barred from the pages of 36 out of 38 newspapers published in Scotland but we know how to use the internet: we're all over it - twitter, Facebook, blogs - the lot. We can counter today's ridiculous assertion that Nicola Sturgeon's 'attack' on Brexit caused the pound to plunge. (If only we had that power...)
I also noticed there was a demo in Glasgow against bias in the BBC today. What struck me was that over 200 people turned out for the rally. I used to wonder what it would take to get folk in Scotland out on the streets. I've seen the marches in Glasgow and Inverness and look forward to the Dundee march.
And then I realised that a lot of today's demonstrators were older people. So much for the story that us oldies are not for independence. Now that's a challenge we've been happy to take on.
Here's to IndyRef2.
Then I thought: No, let's just consider how the UK has ended up with not one but two sets of utterly duff politicians fighting it out to become the government at Westminster.
The Tories seem to rely on being the automatic party of government. They got this from Thatcher. But Thatcher's lot - sneaky and mendacious as they were - at least went about the business of government with some degree of efficiency and with a few ideas to their names. Lousy ideas but still. Now the Tories appear to have no ideas, except what they pick up from Donald Trump. And certainly no principles. They are just on the make. They've turned Westminster into a place for millionaires to 'footer aboot,' as we say in Scotland, saying whatever comes into their heads as long as it's anti-Labour and somehow not quite managing to plan for anything: there's certainly no plan for leaving the EU and no philosophy for the politics of the future should Brexit fall apart (as it is now doing). Instead, they play at using the press and their telly friends to attack Labour.
You'll remember Labour. Once upon a time they had a leader called Hugh Gaitskell. He was a man of principle and he died very suddenly and quite young in the early 1960s, leaving the Labour party to fall into the hands of the biggest bunch of chumps you'd find in a long day's walk: Wilson, Brown, Callaghan. Not one of them had a clue how to sort out the UK economy (nothing new there then). There followed years in what was called 'the wilderness.' Despite it all, Labour managed to come up with another clever, affable and presentable leader, John Smith. He too died very suddenly in the 1990s, to be replaced by a collection of back-stabbing but smart operators: Blair, Brown, Darling, Mandelson, Straw, etc. And then came the Banking Crisis of 2008 and Labour panicked and let the Tories back in.
Unfortunately, the back-stabbers haven't gone away: New Labour is still hanging about, attacking anyone who isn't New Labour, especially Jeremy Corbyn. It's as if Labour have learned nothing and forgotten nothing: it hasn't occurred to them that the Tories may fight like cats in a sack from the day they win a general election until the day they have to fight the next one, but they will always rally enough to make Labour look stupid. And they have the press behind them.
Of course, I don't care what happens with either the Tories or Labour in Scotland. Neither party is going to make a big comeback here. The days are long gone when a "dug wi a rid rosette" could get elected for Labour and a clubbable man who'd been to the right school could get elected for the Tories. These parties are not electable here. Not until they remake themselves as a Scottish Labour or Conservative party after independence - probably with different names and a whole new philosophy.
Scotland now has a highly educated population with an acute sense of political awareness. It's more difficult to fool us now. We may be barred from the pages of 36 out of 38 newspapers published in Scotland but we know how to use the internet: we're all over it - twitter, Facebook, blogs - the lot. We can counter today's ridiculous assertion that Nicola Sturgeon's 'attack' on Brexit caused the pound to plunge. (If only we had that power...)
I also noticed there was a demo in Glasgow against bias in the BBC today. What struck me was that over 200 people turned out for the rally. I used to wonder what it would take to get folk in Scotland out on the streets. I've seen the marches in Glasgow and Inverness and look forward to the Dundee march.
And then I realised that a lot of today's demonstrators were older people. So much for the story that us oldies are not for independence. Now that's a challenge we've been happy to take on.
Here's to IndyRef2.
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