This morning Parliament is discussing whether Westminster should have a general election. Come Decision Time tonight, how Holyrood votes will be crucial. If the Tories, the Lib Dems and the Nats line up and vote for change at 5pm, Gordon Brown will finally relinquish control. Expect to see pics of him clambering into the hybrid Daimler and heading down to see the Queen and ask for a dissolution.
No, not really, but it is still a telling debate. The Tories are drooling at the prospect of power, and just love railing against Iain Gray as a Gordon proxy. For them, Scotland needs a new government purely because they want to see Dave's clammy hands on the steering wheel. They know the voters loathe Labour, and are determined to misread this as some kind of enthusiasm for Tory government.
Bruce Crawford and Mike Russell were in their element too, demonstrating the extraordinary extent to which attacking Labour is the SNP's core business. It's a mix of petty student debating points, the worst sort of hustings behaviour, and the pure loathing they feel towards Labour but not, curiously, towards the Tories. I think they've forgotten the 1980s (above).
Labour for their part share the loathing, and they spewed Tartan Tory-bashing rhetoric at the Nats. In particular, they refought the fall of Callaghan, when the Nats ushered in Thatcherism (although then as now the real problem for them was their own failures). They can add to that the pure fear they feel about this general election, with predictions of the Strange Death Of Labour Britain continuing to spread.
Grim stuff today, therefore. Everyone's time was wasted, it's as if there really wasn't anything more important to discuss, and the mood in the canteen will be like three stag parties meeting on Lothian Road, one in Celtic tops, one in Rangers tops, and one from Chelsea. Thankfully the testosterone levels will be higher than the alcohol levels, otherwise there'd be trouble.
Housekeeping notes: I've finally found out how to turn off authentication for comments, so discussion should flow a little more easily. If I get all that Chinese spam that 538 seems to suffer from I may change my mind. Also, the Tuesday before the Euro poll was this blog's busiest day ever, so thanks for stopping by.
Have to agree James, not that I heard or saw any of the debate. The tenuous link that the Tories were grappling for about Holyrood being a devolved administration therefore a Westminster Government in trouble is very much Holyrood's business was pretty desperate stuff.
I'm sure there are plenty of better topics that could have been discussed. We could fast track Richard Simpson's bill on trans-fats for a start and get it in place before 2013 as is currently scheduled.
Hope you survive the stag parties. Wear a Partick Thistle top, that usually does the trick.
PS What or who is 538?
Thanks for allowing anonymous comments.
I had previously tried commenting, but always failed at getting the OpenID thingy to work, trying it several different ways.
Thanks Smylers, it was hidden in an unexpected place in Movable Type..
.. and Jeff, you mean you watched the American election without reading the best statistical electoral analysis site out there? Check it out: 538
I wrote this then went indeed to the canteen, and it actually smelt of bad BO and resounded with macho banter, exactly as per my prediction.
I didn't watch the election (still a sore point) but I know of 538. Just hadn't twigged so thanks for putting x and y together. And yep, it's an ace site...