I've just been watching tonight's Newsnight Scotland, and I can't decide whether I'm more amazed at the strange leap the Labour party has taken from "no new powers" to "bring it on", or that David Cameron picked independence as his main issue for Prime Minister's Questions.
Wendy Alexander's comments, you could put down to blind panic and a desperate attempt to win back ground from the SNP. David Cameron was more considered however - I imagine that for the PMQ circus questions are more carefully considered. It's an easy hit look to highlight a split, but it also puts the issue of Scottish independence on the news agenda in London (or at least on a couple of blogs. Is it just this week's news, or will it run til we're independent? Hmmm...
(incidentally, while googling, this turned up. Wonder how they're getting on?)
Wendy Alexander's comments, you could put down to blind panic and a desperate attempt to win back ground from the SNP. David Cameron was more considered however - I imagine that for the PMQ circus questions are more carefully considered. It's an easy hit look to highlight a split, but it also puts the issue of Scottish independence on the news agenda in London (or at least on a couple of blogs. Is it just this week's news, or will it run til we're independent? Hmmm...
(incidentally, while googling, this turned up. Wonder how they're getting on?)
2 comments:
I suspect Cameron is looking for the drip-drip-drip here. Next week it will have been forgotten and Wendy will have had her back side kicked.
But you are right. I advocated at the time that the Tories should have spearheaded a call for a vote immediately after last May. Along the lines of "you are so confident then lets have one now". The only two options would have been to harass Salmond into conceding and making it a topic of fun. Or holding the vote and losing before the winter.
To allow a neo-unionist party like Scottish Labour to use this for their own internal politics simply strengthens the SNP hand.
BB I have chipping away at Luke’s popular blog in London about the UK constitutional significance of the independence option ‘debacle’. Of course it’s an uphill struggle to get anyone around the metro-London- Westminster-set to lift their eyes up and look beyond the South East (a gripe that Scotland shares with the rest of English and Wales outwith the South East).
But I’m making headway – on the basis that there are severe warning signs for Labour in England to be drawn from what seems to be the wholesale collapse of Scottish Labour.
By the way BB, have you been able to get the Newsnight Scotland link to work? I’ve mentioned when trying others’ posted links about the oddity of getting the message that ‘sorry Newsnight Scotland is not available for download’- just about as bad as the appalling poor technical standards experienced when you try to post on BBC Scotland’s ‘Blether with Brian’ blog. It’s impossible to blether with him when you regularly cannot post any comments or replies.
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