Come on, Tim!

Hard lines to Andy Murray for losing out at the semi-final stage again, although the first set offered a glimpse of what could have been possible.  I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting slightly sick of London media people saying "of course he's never going to win Wimbledon, we went through this every year with Tim Henman".  Firstly, that's disrespectful to the consummate professional Henman, whose achievements were light-years ahead of any other English or British player for decades.  Secondly, it's monumentally silly to still be framing Murray as "just another Henman" in the year that he reached his third Grand Slam final - Henman never reached any.

The main consolation of the result yesterday is that if Murray does ever make the ultimate breakthrough, I'd actually quite like it to happen away from Wimbledon and everything that goes with it - the "come on, Tim" brigade, and the onlooking "as long as he wins, I'm British for the day" aristocracy (of both the literal and sporting varieties). Why should one of the greatest Scottish sporting triumphs of all-time be entirely reduced to the tedious billing "first Briton to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry"?  No, let's see it happen in New York this September, or Melbourne next January - the surfaces there suit Murray's game better anyway.

Inverclyde by-election : SNP vote share up 15% from general election

Labour have held Inverclyde more comfortably than had seemed likely at the close of the campaign, but nevertheless there was a hefty fifteen-point surge in the SNP's vote, with the Liberal Democrats once again being squeezed almost to the point of embarrassment.  Here is the full result -

Labour 54% (-2)
SNP 33% (+15)
Conservatives 10% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 2% (-11)
UKIP 1% (-)

That represents a headline swing of 9% from Labour to SNP, although as with the Holyrood election it seems likely that there was heavy movement from the Liberal Democrats to both SNP and Labour, with a middling shift direct from Labour to SNP.

I've noticed quite a few Labour-friendly online commenters suggest tonight that what this result shows more than anything is the difference between voting patterns for Westminster and Holyrood.  Well, I have to say, I still don't buy that for a moment - unlike general elections, by-election campaigns for each parliament tend to be more or less interchangeable, and my guess is that a Holyrood by-election in the equivalent constituency would have produced a similar result.  However, the contrary point of view is ironically a useful enough fiction for the SNP, so by all means let Labour peddle it if they really want to!

I always felt that Objective One for the SNP in this election was to avoid a Glasgow NE-style drubbing, and the inevitable subsequent headlines about "the bubble bursting". They've achieved that, although clearly a victory or a defeat that was narrower still would have been preferable.  However, I don't think we should overlook how much more difficult it is to win safe Labour seats in by-elections when Labour are in opposition at both Westminster and Holyrood.  It's not impossible to do so, but it's always going to be like trying to climb a down escalator, and therefore what happened in Inverclyde is certainly not directly comparable with the contests in the previous parliament when an unpopular Gordon Brown was still in Number 10.  In time, this result could end up looking extremely creditable for the SNP - although in truth the long-term impact in either direction will probably be minimal.

Oh, and a final thought - the acceptance speech by the new Labour MP was excruciatingly, ridiculously awful.  It may seem like sour grapes to say that, but it's simply a fact.  I've felt all along that McKenzie was the weakest of the four main candidates, so depressingly there's more than a whiff of the old "monkey with a red rosette" syndrome about the result.

Questions to which the answer is 'this is a really bad line mate, we'll catch up another time, yeah?'

The latest in Labour Hame's thrilling series of "let's ask nationalists a question, delete most of the answers for no apparent reason but nevertheless leave a handful of highly compelling ones, and then pretend the question was UNANSWERED anyway" is this -

Why does Alex Salmond think he needs a referendum before he can negotiate more powers for Holyrood?

Answer : Because he has spent the last two months since the election doing his level best to negotiate more powers for the Scottish Parliament without a referendum, and the evidence of our own eyes confirms that it's like trying to get blood out of a stone. By contrast, a government that has a referendum mandate under its belt has tremendous moral authority in negotiations and is far more likely to succeed.

But as ever, what is more interesting about the question is what it unwittingly reveals about the inner contradictions in Labour's own thinking. Perhaps they can now answer the following -

If you think that an elected Scottish government has a mandate to negotiate more powers without a referendum and indeed should find it easy to succeed in doing so, why did the Labour government at Westminster refuse to enter into such direct negotiations with the SNP administration between 2007 and 2010?

I'm way ahead of you here, guys - the question will be UNANSWERED.

Labour's Inverclyde candidate fails to learn the lessons from the first debate

Although Iain Gray didn't exactly sparkle in any of the leadership debates during the Holyrood campaign, he never quite repeated his finger-jabbing low of the first STV debate, which suggested that he had at least analysed what had gone wrong and learned from it.  Sadly, the same can't be said for Labour's Inverclyde by-election candidate Iain McKenzie, who made an idiot of himself in the first debate by trying to shout down the 20-year-old Lib Dem candidate and failing, and who in the second debate yesterday simply tried yet more of the same.  Having spent much of his own first answer lambasting Anne McLaughlin of the SNP without any interruption, it looked absolutely ghastly when he reacted with such fury to McLaughlin returning the compliment that he instantly boomed "I'LL NEED TO STOP YOU RIGHT THERE".  It also didn't look great when he later tried to shout down the moderator Isabel Fraser when she was admonishing all the candidates for speaking over each other - McLaughlin, by contrast, looked completely in control of herself and just smiled mischievously at the collective telling-off.  Angus Macleod suggested on Twitter that McKenzie's agitated performance may be a sign that Labour are worried about losing the seat - I've no idea if that's true, but you'd certainly be forgiven for suspecting that.

McLaughlin had also very cleverly prepared a "heads I win, tails you lose" trap for McKenzie - she again asked her question from the first debate about whether he, as the head of the Labour-Tory coalition on Inverclyde Council, could guarantee that there would be no compulsory redundancies.  If he had repeated his non-answer from the first debate, the implication would have been obvious - as it was, the fact that he gave a completely different answer this time and offered a firm guarantee allowed McLaughlin to claim a first success as a prospective MP for Inverclyde.

A quick word about Sophie Bridger of the Lib Dems - I thought she had improved markedly from Thursday, although her hesitant response on the question of whether the operational life of Hunterston should be extended gave the impression once again that she simply hasn't done her homework on the local area properly.  Her best moment, ironically, came when Isabel Fraser challenged her on her agent's comment that the Lib Dems couldn't win - Bridger refreshingly didn't try to flannel her way out of a sticky question, but instead smiled and admitted her agent had been foolish to say it.  David Wilson of the Tories, by contrast, after a reasonably impressive first debate, came across as insufferably smug this time.

Overall verdict - another clear win for Anne McLaughlin, but this time without anyone laying a glove on her.

Anne McLaughlin (SNP) 9/10
Sophie Bridger (Liberal Democrat) 7/10
David Wilson (Conservative) 5/10
Iain McKenzie (Labour) 4/10

REVEALED : My hurt at being stalked on Twitter in a creepy, weird way

A few hours ago, I received this tip-off from Political Betting stalwart Tim -

"I see a couple of the Sarah Brown baiters/Tears for Piers merchants have taken to abusing you on the twittersphere"

Well, obviously this piqued my interest, but the trouble is that with a common name like 'James Kelly' it's difficult to track down any mentions of me using the search function. However, it soon dawned on me that it was more a question of checking the Twitter pages of one or two of the usual suspects, and in the end it took all of thirty seconds to find the exchange in question. No prizes for guessing who it was...

Jason Manc : Could we deep fry James Kelly and feed him to Alex Salmond?

Plato : LOL a mere snack I suspect.

Fitalass : Blimey, I see that you are becoming a regular feature on someone's blog. Creepy.

Plato : I'm sure its fascinating - I blocked someone on Twitter...

Fitalass : Oh, were you being followed by him or someone else?

Plato : Whoever it was sent me a link to a certain blog - I just blocked them immediately - worthy of a certain Mr Ireland.

Fitalass : That is just creepy. Have you suddenly got any other followers tweeting out odd or dodgy links & stuff?

Plato : I get several a day that I assume are spam accounts trying to flog stuff - I never look at them either so pointless!

Now, it has to be said this exchange is rather amusing on a number of counts -

1) Plato may think she's blocked me on Twitter but as far as I can see she hasn't.  This follows the familiar pattern of her repeatedly claiming to "put me on ignore" at PB, but mysteriously still being aware of everything I post.

2) Even if she had blocked me it wouldn't have made any difference, because I wasn't one of her followers and - for obvious reasons - had no plans to become one. (And unlike Facebook, you can still see the tweets of people who have blocked you, so the chances are I would have remained completely oblivious to it.)

3) The "link I sent to Plato" (which Fitalass, aka 'ChristinaD', bizarrely tries to lump in with automated internet marketing spam!) was of course no such thing - I simply followed the normal practice of referencing Plato's username in a tweet that was about her, and which happened to have a link to a blog-post at the end.

4) It's somewhat curious that Plato disdainfully claims (ie. "I'm sure it's fascinating") not to have followed the link, because by that point she had already discussed its contents with me on more than one occasion!

5) As I understand it, part of the ever-shifting basis for Fitalass and Plato's charge that I am some kind of "creepy, weird stalker" is that I have discussed them on a public forum (ie. here) without their express permission. Indeed, just the other night, Fitalass claimed with characteristic melodrama that the fact I had done so had "genuinely made her feel physically sick". Clearly the penny has yet to drop for both women that discussing views that have been expressed by others on the record and in a public space (ie. nothing whatever to do with their private or family lives) isn't known as stalking, it's known as political blogging. I would certainly be surprised to learn that Plato seeks written permission from Lib Dem HQ before going off on one about Chris Huhne on a daily basis - but let's leave that to one side. I'm just so incredibly humbled to uncover conclusive proof from Twitter that both Plato and Fitalass practice what they preach with such rigour - and I'm delighted to announce that I'll be continuing to follow their shining example in future.

By the way, if Plato wants to know what 'creepy, weird stalking' really looks like, she might want to cast her mind back to the time someone tracked down Tim's full name and home address, and posted it on the internet out of spite. Oh, wait a moment - wasn't it her that did that?

No good deed goes unpunished by the BOA Brit Nat zealots

To return briefly to the subject of the GB Olympic football team, some rather startling choice of language from the Mail -

"The British Olympic Association have confirmed the GB teams will be run by the English FA but can include players from any home nation. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland remain implacably opposed to a Great Britain team, claiming their separate nation status could be under threat and there are fears their players might be intimidated into declining.

Those fears were not allayed by an SFA spokesman saying it would be viewed as 'treachery' for a Scot to play for Team GB. The managerial appointments will put Pearce on a collision course with the FA of Wales over the probable selection of Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, and with the Scottish FA over his goalkeeping choice and possibly other players."

Heaven forbid that the SFA should concern itself first and foremost with defending the interests of Scottish football, rather than "allaying the fears" of fretting London journalists that it might do something untoward like...well, defending the interests of Scottish football. The SFA is called the Scottish Football Association for a very good reason - it's supposed to be the governing body of football in a country called Scotland. That means it shouldn't have to "intimidate" players into not participating in the Olympics - it should be able to, you know, decide. If the BOA and English FA choose to play cynical and legalistic games to circumvent that "problem" and get what they selfishly want, they and their cheerleaders in the London press are in absolutely no position to moan if the SFA respond in kind by playing hardball to protect Scotland's football autonomy as best it can in difficult circumstances. This wasn't a fight of the SFA's choosing - they entered into a compromise deal that everyone should have been able to live with (to allow an English team to nominally represent GB), but their good faith has been betrayed. No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes.

I even saw a journalist the other day who described the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish administrators as "traitors" - a curious form of treason it is that basically consists of NOT selling out your own countries.

Incidentally, it's amusing to spot in the Mail article that the English FA will not consider Euro 2012 players for selection in the GB team. Since it was the BOA's supposed zeal for non-discriminatory selection policies that was the pretext for breaching the deal with the Celtic associations, I trust they'll be coming down on the FA like a ton of bricks...

North Ayrshire Labour councillor thinks that Scotland should be forced to stay in the United Kingdom even if the majority vote for independence

In grasping for ways to thwart the democratic self-determination of the Scottish people, the fundamentalist unionist tendency have already test-driven the 'UK-wide vote' wheeze and the 'two referendums' wheeze, with conspicuously little success on both occasions. It was only a matter of time before someone completed the set by seizing the mantle of George Cunningham and deciding they may as well stop faffing about and just get on with rigging the ballot itself. Dear old friend of this blog, the mysteriously bashful "Braveheart" of Councillor Alex Gallagher fame, had this to say in a recent post -

"It therefore seems unacceptable that the currently effective governance of the country could be overturned by a simple majority of Scots voting in a one-off referendum.

If the turnout at a referendum was at the same level as recent elections, a 51% vote in favour of independence would need the actual votes of less than a third, maybe even a quarter, of the electorate. This is no basis to create a new country. If the referendum is to go ahead there must be a threshold - two-thirds of votes cast or 45% of the electorate, or some similar substantial proportion – that would secure the acquiescence of the minority in the upheaval implied by breaking up the UK."

Two-thirds of the votes cast? I never agreed with George Robertson about much, but I wholeheartedly agreed with him in 1996 when in unveiling the devolution referendum he declared that never again should the will of the people in a constitutional referendum be overturned by a "fancy franchise". What Councillor Gallagher is suggesting is that 66% of people could vote Yes to independence and 34% could vote No, and the result would be ignored. It's a phrase I've used before, but that isn't self-determination, it's a hostage situation.

Incidentally, isn't it curious that Councillor Gallagher, a self-styled "sensible, moderate, fellow, who thinks that the Tories have the wrong recipe for a decent society" is quite happy to enthuse about the status quo of Tory rule from London as "effective governance"? Indeed, he's so sure of himself on the latter point that he arrogantly thinks that even if a majority of Scots take a diametrically opposite view on the "effectiveness" of London Tory governance, their views should be taken no account of whatsoever. It's also worth pointing out that the Welsh Assembly was established after a 50.3% - 49.7% vote in favour, on a turnout of roughly 50% - does Councillor Gallagher think that the current Labour administration in Cardiff Bay is an abhorrence that is getting in the way of "effective" Tory governance from London? I can only assume he must do.

SNP vote share doubles in key Aberdeen by-election gain

It's rare for by-elections to have anything more than a psychological effect, but yesterday's vote in the Airyhall, Broomhill and Garthdee ward was one of the exceptions. The SNP had already overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the largest party on Aberdeen Council after a recent by-election victory, and there seems to have been a 'gentlemen's agreement' that the coalition between the two parties would switch to SNP leadership if the Lib Dems failed to make up the gap by winning this one. In the event, not only did the Lib Dems fail to win, it was the SNP who won big -

SNP 33% (+16)
Labour 23% (+10)
Conservatives 19% (-8)
Liberal Democrats 16% (-22)

So absolutely no sign of the SNP's honeymoon period coming to an end, which is cause for encouragement a week out from the Inverclyde by-election. However, with Labour being the main opponents next week, the fly in the ointment is that their support increased significantly as well. The swing from Lib Dem to SNP was a whopping 19%.

The moment the Labour candidate for Inverclyde was made to look two feet smaller

The Politics Now debate between the four main Inverclyde by-election candidates was considerably more entertaining than expected, albeit mostly for the wrong reasons. At least three of the four candidates had mildly excruciating "I really wish you hadn't asked me that question" moments, and for all that she won the debate hands down, it has to be said that the SNP's Anne McLaughlin was one of them. Yes, it was monumentally pointless for Bernard Ponsonby to persevere with the questions on defence policy when she'd more less put her hands up and admitted she didn't know the answers (Andrew Neil is similarly petty in asking his guests complex economic questions he knows perfectly well they can't answer), but all the same this sort of thing has happened so often that you'd think the SNP high command would by now have got everyone together and made sure they know the detailed proposals for an independent Scotland's defence capabilities off by heart.

The undoubted highlight of the evening (and a rare case of me finding myself cheering on one of Clegg's mob) was 20-year-old Lib Dem candidate Sophie Bridger's hugely satisfying slap-down of Labour's Iain McKenzie. He'd been quite simply refusing to let her complete her answer to his question about why she didn't support mandatory prison sentences for carrying knives (that old favourite), repeatedly interrupting her with the moronic and faintly patronising line "don't take that on the doors of Inverclyde, Sophie". Eventually she paused, fixed him with an icy glare, and asked him : "are you going to lecture me or are you going to let me answer your question?". The effect was extraordinary - McKenzie fell completely silent and instantly looked about two feet smaller.

That masterstroke couldn't, however, disguise the fact that it was otherwise a very patchy performance by Bridger, who herself looked utterly panic-stricken when the Tory candidate David Wilson asked her a question she didn't have a scooby about. Understandably, he decided against letting her off the hook at that point - she'll clearly have to brush up on the indispensable art of the non-answer as a matter of urgency. And when the tables were turned and she had the chance to grill Wilson, her efforts to get him to admit that the Lib Dem contribution had made the coalition government "fairer" were swatted away with ease, as he on four separate occasions gave her precisely the opposite answer to the one she was clearly anticipating!

As if that wasn't enough, Bridger was also skewered by Ponsonby when he asked her what the coalition's biggest mistake had been. Wouldn't he rather hear about all the good things the government had done, she implored? "No" was the rather foreseeable answer to that one. Then the subject turned to Lib Dem MPs voting in favour of higher tuition fees. Now, if you thought Tavish Scott's stock line during the Holyrood election of "for heaven's sake go and ask them about that" had been weak, Bridger surpassed it with ease with her astounding "I...wasn't...an...MP, I...can't...comment". So let's get this straight - we're not allowed to ask the Scottish Lib Dem leader about the way Scottish Lib Dem MPs vote (including his own deputy) and we're not allowed to ask a prospective Scottish Lib Dem MP either. Is there anyone who actually is available to comment? It's starting to remind me of the old joke about Gerry Adams, when he makes a series of detailed demands of the British government, the Irish government and unionist politicians, but when asked if the IRA should disarm he indignantly replies "well, it's not for me to tell the IRA what to do"!

It wasn't just Bridger who had repeated dodgy moments. Iain McKenzie tied himself up in knots when pressed about Iain Davidson's charge that the SNP are "neo-fascists". McKenzie stressed that he wouldn't have used such language himself because he didn't want to drag politics down to "that level", but when asked if it had been gutter politics he replied : "it's not gutter politics, it's Iain's type of politics". OK, so Iain Davidson is not a gutter politician, but he is, it seems, very much at "that level" of politics. Not to worry, Mr McKenzie - I'm sure no-one will have spotted the implication, let alone found it side-splittingly funny.

Anyway, here is how I scored the debate -

Anne McLaughlin (SNP) 8/10
David Wilson (Conservative) 6/10
Sophie Bridger (Liberal Democrat) 5/10
Iain McKenzie (Labour) 4/10

How exactly is Alex Salmond going to turn into David Owen?

Back to Labour Hame (already it's like slipping on an old jacket), and it's depressingly predictable to see John McTernan use Scottish Labour's obvious need to reinvent itself as an excuse to subtly peddle the hoary old myth that "The Only Possible Modernisation is Blairite Modernisation" -

"Again, Labour has been here before. The scale of the 1983 defeat, under the leadership of Michael Foot, drove Labour modernisation, first under Neil Kinnock, then John Smith and finally – and successfully – it was led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson.

At the core of that modernisation was the understanding that no seats were safe any more, the defection of the working classes and reform minded middle classes left Labour with no choice to build a new coalition. Except in Scotland, where the 1983 result was the beginning of a false dawn that has blighted Scottish Labour thinking ever since. Because it didn’t face the same reversal in its heartlands, and indeed from 1987 was winning seats from the Tories. During the following twenty years of electoral dominance in Scotland Labour never felt the pressure to modernise. Was it smugness or the lack of an existential challenge? A bit of both probably. Whatever, the pressure is on now.

Where do they start? With tone – and Tone."

Tom Harris is of course another true believer in this creed, going out of his way to "correct" Gordon Brewer a few weeks ago when he suggested that New Labour had never been much loved in Scotland. Yes, Tom, Labour racked up a huge vote in Scotland in 1997, but if you attribute that to the Blairite project rather than to an overwhelming longing to see the back of the Tories after eighteen years of despair, you're deluding yourself.

McTernan's Labour Hame piece concludes with a thoroughly baffling observation...

"The election may have been a sea-change, or a bubble. Alex Salmond may be Margaret Thatcher or David Owen. That is as much in Labour’s hands as it is in his. Who dares wins."

The difficulty there is that Salmond has already got two election victories under his belt - just one fewer than Margaret Thatcher, and indeed McTernan himself tellingly compares the 2011 landslide to Thatcher's second triumph in 1983. Precisely how, then, is McTernan proposing that Labour can still turn Salmond into the new David Owen? Presumably we should expect at some point in the near future that Salmond will leave the SNP, and form a new rival nationalist party, perhaps called the "Independence Party". It will swiftly go into an electoral pact with another party, let's say the Greens, but suffer two heavy electoral defeats. At that point the Greens will demand a merger, to which Salmond will react with fury, but be outvoted by his own party. He will then set up yet another new party called the "continuing Independence Party", but that will fold two years later after running out of money and being beaten by the Monster Raving Loony Party in a by-election.

Yes, it could happen, John. But I doubt it.