Pissflaps posted:

Murphy seemed very effective in the referendum campaign and judging by the nationalist outrage at his appointment that should continue.

Hoops posted:

It is amazing how the #the45 crew now hate Scottish Labour more than the Scottish Tories. It's gone beyond tactically attacking seats and become an idea of the enemy, just as much as Westminster is.

quote:

SCOTLAND'S Independence Referendum threw up some odd bedfellows.

Christian capitalist Brian Souter and Greens chief Patrick Harvie on the Yes side immediately spring to mind.

The pro-Union campaign had some longer-term, unlikely alliances, most notably the Labour Party and the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland.

As far back as 2007 the fiercely socially conservative Order's Grand Master called on the majority of his members with a historic animosity to Labour to suspend it and back the Unionist party most likely to defeat the SNP in their area: Labour.

September's No vote, which both the Order and Labour have credited themselves for helping secure, has largely put an end to that marriage of convenience, creating a political vacuum one party believes itself ready to fill; Ukip.

Senior sources within the anti-immigration party have told me its (now seemingly permanent) interim leadership in Scotland believes it is capable of securing a seat in the 2016 Holyrood elections either in Glasgow or Lanarkshire.

One concern is that this involves attempting to introduce what boils down to sectarianism into mainstream Scottish politics.

The tell-tale signs are there.

Arthur 'Misty' Thackeray, Ukip's Scottish chairman, notoriously claimed Glasgow City Council was for 'gays, Catholics and communists', accusing it of a "suffocating culture of anti-loyalism" and criticising efforts to curb a march by the far-right Scottish Defence League.

Thackeray has also sought to compare Catholicism & Islam as "inwardly sharing a fascist ideology".

Ukip's Scottish Borders luminary Caroline Santos has been throwing her support behind some maverick fringes of the Rangers support, championing the cause that Celtic FC were receiving 'State Aid' from Glasgow Council or describing MSPs who signed a motion congratulating Alloa's recent victory as "bigots".

It is a path Ukip is also trying in Northern Ireland, out Unionisting the mainstream Unionists.

(One acquaintance who had a brief dalliance with Ukip told me amongst a host of reasons for leaving was that it had become "too Ulstery".)

Meanwhile, with Nigel Farage's focus being solely on Westminster 2015, Scotland remains a backwater run almost as a Ukip franchise.

The source said: "(MEP David) Coburn is nominally in charge but Misty runs the show. Part of the strategy they think will get them at least is a seat is to try and legitimise sectarianism in Scotland.

"The question is how much of this is just opportunism and how much is deeply felt. People who don't know the turf are allowing this approach. But members in England would find it abhorrent."

The question is, who will buy into this? Ukip in England may be surging but attempts at Northern Ireland-style uber Unionism in Scottish politics have flopped badly in the past. (Scottish Unionist Party anyone?)

Furthermore, the Orange Order, canny at times, does not instruct its members which way to vote. Ukip wants out of the EU. It wants a repeal of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Why would an organisation which routinely cites the ECHR to underpin its right to march want that?

Hoops posted:

What did he do during the referendum campaign that was so bad? He was far from the most visible No campaigner.

I think you should reserve "abhorrent" for someone other than a centrist politician honestly.

quote:

Just how positive will depend on how long the price stays low. That is the subject of a continuing tussle between OPEC and the shale-drillers. Several members of the cartel want it to cut its output, in the hope of pushing the price back up again. But Saudi Arabia, in particular, seems mindful of the experience of the 1970s, when a big leap in the price prompted huge investments in new fields, leading to a decade-long glut. Instead, the Saudis seem to be pushing a different tactic: let the price fall and put high-cost producers out of business. That should soon crimp supply, causing prices to rise.

quote:

This shake-out will be painful. But in the long run the shale industry’s future seems assured. Fracking, in which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is injected into shale formations to release oil, is a relatively young technology, and it is still making big gains in efficiency. IHS, a research firm, reckons the cost of a typical project has fallen from $70 per barrel produced to $57 in the past year, as oilmen have learned how to drill wells faster and to extract more oil from each one.
[...]
Nor need shale oil be a uniquely American phenomenon: there is similar geology all around the world, from China to the Czech Republic. Although no other country has quite the same combination of eager investors, experienced oilmen and pliable bureaucrats, the riches on offer must eventually induce shale-oil exploration elsewhere.

Hoops posted:

What did he do during the referendum campaign that was so bad? He was far from the most visible No campaigner.

I think you should reserve "abhorrent" for someone other than a centrist politician honestly.

Spooky Hyena posted:

He didn't really do anything out of the usual in the referendum campaign, he's just a nasty blairite who's more than happy to use sectarianism to get his own way and he didn't stop being that during the campaign. In any case, Murphy's a bad thing across the board because he's entrenching the divide between the SNP and Labour which isn't good for Labour because they're in the minority now and tribalism is just going to ensure defectors to the SNP stay there, and it's not good for the SNP because the opposition party is killing itself which lowers the leverage that voters have on the party.

jre posted:

In what way did he use sectarianism ?

Spooky Hyena posted:

The one off the top of my head is promising to repeal laws banning sectarian expression at football games if he becomes FM.

jre posted:

That law doesn't ban sectarian expression because that was already illegal . It allows the police to arrest people for saying "something that a reasonable person may find offensive" it's a terrible law that probably breaks the European convention on human rights.

Spooky Hyena posted:

The one off the top of my head is promising to repeal laws banning sectarian expression at football games if he becomes FM.

jre posted:

dadrips posted:

He's not the only one saying that the Offensive Behaviour Act is rubbish. Sectarianism is a huge problem in the west (not least because Glasgow lovely Clowncil seem to permit orange walks every other loving weekend) but it needs a more delicate and nuanced approach than this. Remember that this is a piece of legislation which has only been enacted due to the SNP's absolute majority, all other parties (including the Greens!) voted against it.

quote:

Complaints about how the law is enforced and the lack of nuance are a different ballgame to scrapping the legislation, though. Sectarianism while not originating from football is nurtured there. The bill isn't good at targeting that and most likely needs changed, but scrapping it without any sort of replacement is the silliest thing to do from an anti-sectarian viewpoint because it's just a return to the problems which led to the law being drafted in the first place. Trouble is, Murphy's plans for combating sectarianism are "in our classrooms and communities, not with gimmick legislation.", ie buggerall. It'd be nice to think that bigotry could be stamped out by everyone just being told to be nice to each other rather than have actual legislation on it, but I'm sceptical of anyone who suggests that it'd actually work and it really throws up a lot of red flags that Murphy's targeting the support of people who want to perform the kind of act banned by the law. If he wasn't, after all, he'd reform sectarian law rather than wiping it out.

jre posted:

Ruth Davidson could turn up to parliament wearing a che guevara t-shirt and holding a communist manifesto but people in Scotland are still not going to vote Tory in any significant numbers. The Scottish Tory youth cancelled it's conference because no one was going, how are they suddenly going to be able canvas effectively and take award off labour ?

jre posted:

Nicola sturgeon while a good politician is totally untested as leader and I don't think it's a slam dunk that the snp will continue to dominate the parliament. also I think that a lot of the support they picked up during the referendum will evaporate once it becomes obvious there's not going to be another independence got any time soon.

Venomous posted:

Added to which, since the SNP isn't going for independence this time around and Sturgeon has openly acknowledged that

Hoops posted:

What did she say? I think the SNP have been explicitly clear that independence is still a huge priority for them.

Hoops posted:

What did she say? I think the SNP have been explicitly clear that independence is still a huge priority for them.

quote:

Sturgeon then confirmed a dramatic shift in the SNP’s quest for independence, ending 25 years of non-participation in the cross-party coalitions which set up the Scottish parliament in the 1990s and increased its devolved powers under Salmond’s often hostile leadership.

“There will be no sitting on the sidelines for the SNP in this process. Nor will there be any secretly hoping for this process to fail; I want this process to succeed,” she said, adding: “I am not prepared for another referendum. We’ve just had a referendum.”

Venomous posted:

Considering there was a margin of just 277,592 votes between the Tories and Labour in the regional vote in 2011 and they've consistently held between 15 and 18 seats in Holyrood (of which 12 in 2011 were regional MSPs), it's not as huge as you might think. Besides, they don't need to canvass effectively, they just need to seem better than Labour, particularly to older voters who oppose the SNP just because a man on the TV said Salmond was bad.

It's a given that they've lost the youth vote to the SNP and the Greens, but I doubt Labour have gained much in the way of youth supporters either, and the Lib Dems are already finished.

quote:

She was Deputy First Minister for seven years and was consistently popular in that time, so I doubt she's going to flounder as First Minister. Added to which, since the SNP isn't going for independence this time around and Sturgeon has openly acknowledged that, they're not exactly going to lose anyone who they haven't lost in the past three months. Plus, with Murphy at the helm, I doubt Labour will be able to drum up enough popular support to end the SNP's dominance, and we've already established that the Tories aren't going to form a government, so unless Sturgeon is secretly a Thatcherite I don't the SNP losing their majority in 2016.

jre posted:

There's a big difference between the scrutiny you get as leader and being no 2. John Prescott was deputy prime minister for 10 years, how do you think he would have done as leader ? I think murphy is a smug twat, but he's definitely going to be more effective than Lamont ( a cardboard cutout would have been more effective) has been for the last three years. As for the SNP not going for independence this time, you should read back in this thread around the time of the conference. People were discussing the "likely" times for the next referendum. 2017 apparently.

Lugaloco posted:

How do you test for a leader though? Yes, some people are made to be second-in-command (I'd think John Swinney is pretty much that) but at some point you've simply got to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

quote:

The SNP would be unwise to underestimate Murphy, he may be 100% unfiltered evil, but he's also a wily campaigner with a very friendly media environment.

quote:

A new referendum would be a good thing from a pro-democratic point of view.

Spooky Hyena posted:

Agreed, I wouldn't say that third-party polling is good grounds to go independent. If there were more referendums planned, however...

Hoops posted:

I honestly don't know what follows on from "however..."

keep punching joe posted:

This is slightly interesting, it's a PDF of how Labour MPs and MSPs voted in the leadership election, including the preference ranking.

Johann Lamont voted 1. Neil Findlay 2. Sarah Boyack 3. No preference and voted for Katy Clark in the deputy roll.

Spooky Hyena posted:

A new referendum would be a good thing from a pro-democratic point of view.

Spooky Hyena posted:

...it'd be better grounds for constitutional change than seeing what ICM have to say?

Jedit posted:

"We should keep holding referendums until the people say what we want them to say" is not the meaning of democracy.

jre posted:

Why would we bother having another referendum with the same question when we know what people think ? The majority don't want independence.

Claiming its 'pro-democratic' to ignore this result and keep pressing to re-run the referendum until you get the result you want is nuts.

Spooky Hyena posted:

Repeating votes to determine whether or not the populace still support what they voted for in the first vote is how democracy works, like it or not. I didn't oppose the 2010 general election on democratic grounds even when it was pretty likely I wasn't going to be in the majority because that's just how democracy works. And I didn't mention stopping democratic expression on the issue if a yes result passes, where on earth did you get that from?

And in any case, what makes you decrying any suggestion for a future referendum as anti-democratic anything other than stopping after "you get the result you want"?

jre posted:

Agitating for a new referendum on a major constitutional change 3 months after the previous one was held, is not "how democracy works", it's being pathologically unable to accept the result.

I'm sure you'd support having a referendum on rejoining the union every year after a yes vote.