Campaign Saturday

I'm just about to head for bed, absolutely knackered after a satisfying day's campaigning.

Before heading out canvassing for Chris Stephens in Glasgow South West this morning, I baked two dozen fairy cakes. I canvassed from 11 'til 1.30, grabbed some lunch, and joined the Glasgow East team leafleting for John Mason. We worked through until nearly 5pm, then I came back home, made some Easter nests and iced the fairy cakes (with suitably elegant yellow icing and wee SNP symbols), had a shower and took the cakes to Billy McAllister's Glasgow North East adoption meeting in Sighthill.

I feel I should commend the One Stop Shop on a wonderful spread of food - delicious curry as well as pizza slices and salad. Perfect after such a long day! I did manage a Canadian barndance at the ceilidh; sadly, the dashing white sergeant is a bit much for me in this condition!

In the SNP, we all work incredibly hard to get our message out, and support all our candidates. Most people there tonight were also out campaigning during the day, and will be out again tomorrow.

I'm telling you all this because I want to let you know how hard we're all working - right across the city and across Scotland - because we're a party that takes nothing for granted.

The sad thing is, Labour still do, and have clearly learnt nothing from their defeats in Crewe and Glasgow East. Between all my various tasks today I read that, speaking at the Labour Conference in Glasgow today, John Prescott said:

"I was in Crewe the other week, we're going to win that back, it's a Labour seat. We let it go and we shouldn't because we didn't fight hard enough.

"And that's the same as I want that fight in Glasgow East, getting those seats back for Labour because they belong to us and we've got to convince the electorate a bit more."

The arrogance of Prescott, saying that they 'own' these seats, and presumably the voters within them, is just breathtaking.

In this General Election, moreso perhaps than previous elections, this kind of arrogance just won't do. Why should people continue to slavishly, unquestioningly, vote for a party who has been in power for so long? People I speak to on the doorsteps certainly don't see why they should. The majority of people I spoke to today used to vote Labour, but were giving serious thought to switching. I hear from colleagues that this is happening all round Scotland.


John Mason, the SNP MP for Glasgow East, said:

"It is this arrogance that loses Labour elections. No seat in Glasgow 'belongs' to any party.

"Seats are not Labour seats or Lib Dem seats. They are not even SNP seats. They are the people's seats.

"The SNP will never forget that and we will make sure that the people of Glasgow East know how Labour still take their votes for granted with this arrogant blunder."