Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Remember the day Eddie Izzard campaigned with Elaine C Smith under a 'Scotland says Yes' banner?

There are already doctored photos doing the rounds on Twitter of the Z-list celebrities from the much-mocked 'Let's Stay Together' video, with their patronising "We love you, Scotland (you're such a fab nuclear weapons base)!!!!" messages being replaced with "Yes" or "Aye". But the photo of Eddie Izzard below doesn't need any doctoring - it really does show him campaigning with Elaine C Smith under a 'Scotland Says Yes!' banner.


That was just three years ago, when both were campaigning for a Yes vote in the AV referendum.  It seems that Izzard's zeal for constitutional reform has very rapidly deserted him, because he now wants Scotland to reject a proportional voting system for national elections, a written constitution, the abolition of unelected legislators, and all of the other long overdue steps forward that would happen with independence, and that would only happen with independence.

Alternatively, it could just be that he (along with Tony Robinson, Richard Wilson and Ross Kemp) is a blindly loyal Labour man, and just goes along with whatever stance the Labour leadership take on any given issue.  If so, it's rather sad.

As ever, four little words : True Love Isn't Possessive.

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A couple of interesting straws in the wind, albeit based on extremely small sample sizes - the Scottish subsamples from the new GB-wide telephone polls conducted by ICM and Ipsos-Mori both show the SNP in the lead in Westminster voting intentions...

ICM :

SNP 34%
Labour 24%
Conservatives 21%
UKIP 11%
Greens 1%
Liberal Democrats 1%

Ipsos-Mori :

SNP 36%
Labour 28%
Conservatives 14%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Greens 7%
UKIP 5%

16 comments:

  1. Lib dems 1%

    LOL

    Yes, I know it's just a subsample, but frankly it's only the most blinkered and loyal of Clegg's ostrich faction that haven't yet realised they are are going to get annihilated.

    You begin to wonder if all those jokes about Clegg being a tory plant sent to destroy the lib dems have a grain of truth in them. Particularly after Clegg has just utterly destroyed the lib dems on civil liberties by voting through the rebranded snoopers charter.

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  2. True Love Isn't Possessive.

    Putting all the other stuff you could pick holes in or laugh at, that's the major failing of the vid.

    Lovebombs must be 'We'll love you whatever you decide (and it's your decision)'.

    If not, they'll backfire.

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  3. True Love Isn't Possessive.

    Putting all the other stuff you could pick holes in or laugh at, that's the major failing of the vid.

    Lovebombs must be 'We'll love you whatever you decide (and it's your decision)'.

    If not, they'll backfire.

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  4. Could be they are getting paid for their love-in advert? or he is looking to the future earnings,or rather they all are.

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  5. Been wondering recently about the impact of Indyref and the general appalling standard of Labour in Scotland on the 2015 election results. Do we know how many seats Labour would likely lose in Scotland if such polling numbers were right?

    If you add this to a probable late tactical swing from UKIP to Tory and the less probable return of 2010 Lib Dem voters from labour (e.g. if somehow they grow a backbone in the next 12 months) then the numbers could look even more bleak for Labour?

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  6. It's astonishing but Calamity Clegg has somehow done it again. Just when you thought he couldn't make himself and his party even more of a complete laughing stock than it already is, he's now claiming to be against the bedroom tax???

    Is this incompetent idiot for real??

    Who on earth does Clegg think is going to believe him? It's tuition fees all over again.

    I can't wait to see how quickly Clegg is going to set up the vote to get rid of the despised bedroom tax in the commons.

    ROFL

    Let's face it, even the most stupid political interviewer on the planet will obviously ask Clegg how he can possibly oppose something he and his ostrich faction supported every step of the way and how soon Clegg's going to have the vote to abolish it since he is in power right now.

    I honestly can't remember seeing a political leader as staggeringly incompetent and as intent on destroying his own party as Clegg.

    Sure, little Ed and Cammie are clearly a pair of lightweight jokes, but Clegg seems to be going out of his way to try and make them look good.

    It's jawdropping. Calamity Clegg seems to want to get the lib dems way, way below 10% and heading for under 5% if he keeps this up.

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  7. It is not believable that LibDems are 9% in Ipsos Mori poll.

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  8. Remember when Eddy Izzard was mildly amusing and didn't campaign alongside the Orange Order? Neither can I. He was never funny. Just another labour bigot. Labour first last and always no matter what they do.

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  9. Anon : To be honest I did find him funny when he used to appear regularly on TV. The odd thing is that he's not really seen very much anymore, and yet for some reason his political pronouncements are still regarded as significant.

    Callum : We probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves, because the result of the referendum and any rigged leaders' debates will have an enormous impact. If there's a Yes vote, I would expect an SNP landslide next year, as people look to bolster's Scotland's negotiating hand. If it's a No vote, it's much harder to predict, although the Parti Québécois remained very resilient in the periods after the two No votes in Quebec.

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  10. If there's a No vote I would expect a Conservative landslide in England. Voters in Scotland should contemplate that possibility.

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  11. James: Yeah I know, far too many variables. Still, I'm not fully buying the line that FPTP will come to Labours rescue. Most unpredictable election in years.

    It will be interesting in Scotland in the event of a No vote. Going to have a lot of very conflicted Yes people who don't want to back Labour for obvious reasons but also don't want to hand Tories another 5 years.

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  12. In the event of a No vote I expect Tory majority at Westminister followed by another big SNP win at Holyrood.

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  13. "Going to have a lot of very conflicted Yes people who don't want to back Labour for obvious reasons but also don't want to hand Tories another 5 years."

    But is that really much of a conflict? There are very few, if any, authentic Labour-Tory marginals in Scotland, so there's no real 'risk' attached to voting SNP.

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  14. If there's a no vote, an outcome which I doubt and the SNP win a majority of seats in 2015, they could declare UDI, could they not.
    JimnArlene

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  15. and the London-based PR & marketing company that runs Let's Stay Together, Campaign It!, also ran the 'NO to AV' campaign.

    http://www.campaignit.com/our-clients/



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  16. In posted this earlier but it has disappeared.

    James, have you looked at the latest poll commentary on the Herald this morning, specifically the fact that the Labour voter block is haemorhagging towards Yes?

    I can't read it as I don't subscribe but that is what I took from the unredacted bit I could read.

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