FREEDOM!!!! [4]

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Been impressive watching Sturgeon pulling the strings in the House of Commons, even though she is not even an MP there!
Its been a master plan so far from the SNP- that two for two, first English votes for English laws, now fox hunting.
They have played it well and in response today the Sottish Secretary has had to come to the House and promise the Scotland Act will be significantly beefed up.
But I cant believe Cameron walked into this one.
He has made a total arse of English laws by trying to bring it in the back door as a standing order- it let the devolved MP's say it was creating massive constitutional change without a proper debate.
Then they joined together and forced that debate.
And the genius of the SNP position is that its not- we oppose english votes on only English matters- but 'do it right' have an English Parliament, a federal style set up, devo max all round.
Which sounds good to a lot of English ears- but its completely not what the Conservative and Unionst Party want or stand for.
That is why he pulled it for further debate and consideration- the smarter heads in the Irish Unionist parties, and some of the older heads on his own backbenches could see the trap and were not going to vote for it.
A Parliament in each country and youre most of the way to independence.
If Cameron gives concessions he is playing into that, and if he refuses them he looks like he is ignoring the democratically elected voice of the Scottish people and the SNP win.

And proving she will even go back on her word, like on fox hunting, and saying she is going back on it as a deliberate pointed message to Cameron that with his slim majority the SNP can inflict serious wounds on the government, 'he is not master of all he surveys'.

All Cameron can do is what he is doing, giving concessions by beefing up the powers, and by forcing the English votes out of a standing order and into full debate it will inevitability end up more a devolved English parliament than Cameron wants.

at last she shows her true colours. political backstabbing without a care for the actual policies or people involved. as long as she plays the pied piper and wins hollow battles she is happy. carry on. the scales are falling.

halfwise wrote:

Eldorion wrote:All fair points, and I suppose I shouldn't let my distaste for some things the BBC has done lead me to throw it entirely under the bus.

Given the incomparably rich history of what the BBC has produced, despite some of the distasteful revelations about how it has operated at times, I could never reject it.  It remains a gem (albeit tarnished) of the modern age.

hear hear Halfy, for all the Savilles out there theres also the Attenboroughs to even out the pitch.

political backstabbing without a care for the actual policies or people involved.- Figg

I dont see how you come to that conclusion- the people is the very reason for doing it.

and heres me thinking its political fun and games and point scoring.

Not at all- its very serious, the strategy has been well laid and so far very well played. They have so far forced the Tories to back down on four separate pieces of regulation that could negatively impact Scotland and to go away and think again.
Thats exactly what we elected them to do- protect us from the Tories.

So Cameron says 'there is no need' for another referendum vote- which is interesting because it means if there were a call for one would he deny it?

The SNP position is that another referendum is inevitable at some point but that it would require a material change in circumstances to justify holding one.
The big question is will they put a referendum question in the next manifesto for the Scottish elections next year- my guess is no unless something changes between now and then, or they will include it (its been in every SNP manifesto since the 60's) but caveated so that the material change in circumstances has to occur first.

What counts as material change? Well any fundamental shift in how we are governed- so if the badly thought out rushed EVEL that renders Scottish MP's impotent or second class goes through unaltered that would count, the rest of the UK voting Scotland out of the EU if Scotland votes to stay in would be another. Failure to deliver on the Vow made at the end of the referendum would be another material cause.
And then there is the issue Salmond spoke about in the interview the other day- Scotland moving strongly left of centre and England moving strongly right of centre- there is a growing and fundamental shift in how the two nations are governed and how the people of each think it should be governed which if it continues long enough will inevitably lead to a split as eventually the two political outlooks will be utterly opposed.

I really don't understand what the contenders in the Scottish Labourship election are up to.
They both say the Scottish party should be autonomous with its own Scottish policies from Westminster but remain joined with the national Labour Party- they talk about not being directed from Westminster, having a distinctive set of policies reflecting the Scottish membership more.
All well and good, but lets take a highly likely scenario.

Every single year the Scottish Labour conference delegates vote against Trident- and have done since the beginning- previously the leadership 'acknowledged' the vote but the party line was pro-Trident because that the national Labour Party line.

So lets assume as in every other year Scottish Labour again vote against Trident- the new leadership cant claim to be its own thing if it continues to ignore such an overwhelming majority in their own ranks- so then we have Scottish Labour aligned with all the other Scottish parties- SNP, Lib-Dems, Greens and the independents against Trident- thats all of Scotland politically.
But round rolls the next General Election and my local Labour MP is standing for Labour, but with Scottish policies including anti-Trident.
Labour win the election and the Trident vote comes round- now what? It will be a three-line whip so do all the Scottish members vote against it and have the Whip removed and membership withdrawn?
And even if they did it, it wouldn't make one bit of difference as the Tories would vote with national Labour to secure it even if Scots MP's rebelled.
So in effect Labours position would make no sense and produce no results.
And it would leave a situation where very political party voted for in Scotland was anti-Trident- but we'd end up with it here anyway, surely fuelling further the nationalist case that our votes are meaningless within the structure of the Union- it would demonstrate that even if every political and social institution in Scotland is opposed they cant do anything about it.

I just don't see how it can work if Scottish Labour is not independent- and even then there is still the problem that at a General Election a Labour vote in Scotland would be for different policies than a Labour vote in the rest of the UK.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:So Cameron says 'there is no need' for another referendum vote- which is interesting because it means if there were a call for one would he deny it?

The SNP position is that another referendum is inevitable at some point but that it would require a material change in circumstances to justify holding one.
The big question is will they put a referendum question in the next manifesto for the Scottish elections next year- my guess is no unless something changes between now and then, or they will include it (its been in every SNP manifesto since the 60's) but caveated so that the material change in circumstances has to occur first.

What counts as material change? Well any fundamental shift in how we are governed- so if the badly thought out rushed EVEL that renders Scottish MP's impotent or second class goes through unaltered that would count, the rest of the UK voting Scotland out of the EU if Scotland votes to stay in would be another. Failure to deliver on the Vow made at the end of the referendum would be another material cause.
And then there is the issue Salmond spoke about in the interview the other day- Scotland moving strongly left of centre and England moving strongly right of centre- there is a growing and fundamental shift in how the two nations are governed and how the people of each think it should be governed which if it continues long enough will inevitably lead to a split as eventually the two political outlooks will be utterly opposed.

Actually that's not true. England is not moving strongly to right of centre, a lot of the country is moving to the extreme left, ie the support Jeremy Corbin is getting is just one aspect of this. I believe the UK will eventually get a polarised left right divide as things go on, undoing the shift to the centre that came with the Blair years. the Tories are shifting right and the Labour party are heading towards socialism at this rate.

The Corbyn thing is interesting- he is getting a lot of support form the young who are naturally more left of centre.
But if he gets elected leader its more likely to cause a split in the Labour party than anything else similar to the SDLP split. Its already been said that he would find it hard to even form a shadow cabinet- he has tons of growing grass root support, but very little support within the Westminster Party he has to lead.
And then there is the issue of party discipline- how does he get ministers to vote with him on issues when he himself has voted against the party leaderhip over 500 times?
There is also an issue of experience- he has plenty as MP, plenty as backbencher and plenty as a protester- but he has never organised or run anything let one a national political party.

Personally I like him and form a Sottish perspective he is the preferred candidate as he would happily work with the SNP on a raft f issues form voting against Trident to the recent welfare bill debacle which he would have got Labour to vote against with the SNP which could have defeated it.
But I do think his election will through Labour into a turmoil it will take them years to find their way out of.

An I don't see how they win their Scottish seats back in the short term either- an they need those for the numbers- its 50 odd MP's.

I always thought that Kinnock was the best Labour leader. I was gutted when he lost that election. Corbyn seems like a throwback to those more muscular socialist types.

I was never a huge Kinnock fan, I despised Scargill and he seemed too cosy to him for my liking. But I was still gutted Labour lost that one and it meant more Thatcher.

Kinnock was a brilliant orator, when he was on top form he was electric.

Yeah but too cosy to an overpower set of unions that left them ripe for Thatcher to legitimise tearing them down almost completely by, ironically, making them redundant, through destroying the industries and so the workers they represented.

My uncle was a ship engineer, now retired, but he started off in the Clyde shipyards. One night they were doing a job and four of them were sitting around waiting to get a plate welded before they could finish their job- but the welder hadn't showed up.
The welding job, being a very simple one, my uncle -who had started off apprenticed in welding- said he's do it. One of the four however was the shop steward and he warned my uncle that if my uncle picked up that welding torch it was demarcation and he would pull the entire yard out.
Thats why our industries were failing- a basic welder had better terms than a doctor by the end, the pace of work slowed- we couldn't compete at that rate with overseas ship building which as increasingly much cheaper sing cheaper labour, and Maggie had all the excuse she needed to pull it all down and remove the union problem with it.
And Kinnock was too close to all that and helping create the conditions for it to happen in.

Kinnock wasn't too close to Scargill, Kinnock accused him of suicidal vanity and playing into Thatchers hands. they were enemies.

Enemies by the end yes, but that was to late to stop the damage.
He was too close to the Unions. And Labours election system was entirely in the union pockets which meant no leader without union approval- Kinnock among them.

he was against the miners strike

The SNP are playing another clever win/win for them game- they have challenged the new Lib Dem leader, and the potential leaders of Labour and Scottish Labour to not appoint any new members to the House of lords until it is reformed- the SNP don't and never have appointed peers as they don't believe the Lords has any democratic mandate.

This puts the other parties in a tricky position and makes the SNP look like they are creating the agenda in the UK opposition, which they have been for a while now with Labour and Libs in disarray and rudderless.

Corbyn has already come out backing the SNP position on it (though trying to make it sound like a Labour idea which ain't going to fool anyone who isn't English and doesn't know its always been the SNP position and they've been calling for just that to happen)-

Corbyn said he would stop nominations to the Lords should he become Labour leader.
“A thorough and comprehensive review of the House of Lords is long overdue. We as a Labour Party must be at the forefront of a much-needed progressive constitutional reform agenda,” he said.
“I propose that in opposition the Labour Party convene a constitutional convention to move toward a more democratic devolution settlement across the regions and a more representative parliament.”
He added: “In the interim, under our proposals, the Labour Party will certainly not nominate new peers for the Lords which risks undermining its legitimacy.”

that's why Corbyn will never be PM, and of course the SNP want to scrap the House of Lords and fortunately they don't have the power to do anything about it.

Maybe not but its looking like a good chance he will be the Leader of the Opposition for a while.

the Labour party is doomed.

A split is certainly likely. Its been bubbling away since Blair took over, it was somewhat appeased by Brown as PM because he was seen as proper Labour (which is why he never lost his popularity in Scotland even after his defeat, and was still so influential in the referendum debate at the very end with the the Vow), Miliband just tied to sit on the problem and not address it, and as he was voted in by the Unions the left thought he might favour them- but in practise he didn't, he kept Balls as Shadow Chancellor and lots of other Blairites close and kept the Corbyn types out of the Cabinet and higher party positions and he baked Tory welfare caps and cuts as well as supporting the Bedroom Tax.

And the political split in the UK is adding to it all- the Blairites say 'look we just got defeated we were too left, not pro-business enough ect to win the voters we need that went Tory and UKIP.'
And the left say 'we weren't left wing enough, we weren't different enough or offering a coherent vision, look at the SNP sweeping to a landslide on a left wing socialist agenda with a clear progressive message.'

So their problem is a biggy- go right they will never win those 58 Scottish seats back, go left they might not win England back.

I was very disappointed when Chakka khan decided to wimp out because they really need to find someone with the charisma of an very early Blair, before he went loonytoones.

Its the anniversary of the referendum and there is big rally in Glasgow today.
The BBC are marking the occasion with a bunch of features and analysis on the result and what has happened next, among them I found this graph rather striking-



What I find really interesting about it that the speed at which it all changed is deceptive to a point.

The SNP got elected as a minority government to the Scottish Parliament in 2007 after being the 2nd largest party and main opposition for years. In 2011 they got a massive landslide majority (in a PR voting system!), but as you can see their election in 2007 changed nothing- the percent of seats they won at Westminster elections remained more or less the same- with Labour still dominating.

This is because Scots have got quite used to voting differently for different Parliaments- Westminster, Scottish, European.
And no one saw much point in sending a non-Westminster party to Westminster. Instead Scots gave them a position of strength- a majority in Scotland, to do what people had actually elected them too, run the country whilst protecting Scottish interests.

So what changed?- well I reckon just 2 things- Scottish Labour collapsed, in large part down to not knowing how to handle their defeat- they acted basically as if the voters had made a terrible mistake, and they tried everything to bring down the SNP- they did the equivalent of trying to impeach Salmond four or five times, every single time the investigation by the Standards Committee found no charge to answer- it seemed to voters they had no direction, no policies, no ideas, they just attacked the SNP and tried everything to get back at them for winning the election.
The second thing was the Vow- made on the front page of Scotlands largest newspaper the Daily Record, promising essentially devo-max.
Thing is though who could Scotland send to make sure it was held to? Every Westminster party was on the NO side and part of the vow, so you dont send the person who made the promise to make sure they keep the promise. The SNP were the only option for the job- and so they got a landslide, wiping out Scottish Labour in the process.

And now Corbyn. Will he make a difference? He did make me laugh today when I read he had appointed Sarah Champion to the newly invented lefty grass-eating sounding job (also gets the female quota up inventing new posts) of Minster For Preventing Abuse- which is like having a cabinet position for Minister of Making Bad things not Happen.

Its been an interesting year politically since the vote!

Mrs Figg wrote:I was very disappointed when Chakka khan decided to wimp out because they really need to find someone with the charisma of an very early Blair, before he went loonytoones.

um?

I actually prefer the idea of Chakka to Chukka.