Gordon Brown - Robin Hood In Reverse

 

Readers – it’s confession time. I gave Wendy Alexander's keynote speech to the Labour Conference in Aviemore a miss in favour of an afternoon in the pub watching the Celtic-Rangers game.

 

I know, I know, a shameful dereliction of duty. However, I find her appearances at First Minister’s Questions excruciating. Even reading the official report from Holyrood or the published text of her speeches is bad enough, since you can visualise every snide remark, every sneer, every bogus argument and alliterative non-sequitar as if you were trapped in your own personal Room 101 with her playing on loop.

 

However, on occasion, needs must. It was while I was ploughing through her address that I came across the following little gem, as she got stuck into the supposed failings of the SNP government:

 

“And when you strip away the spin its clear where the SNP stand. It is not on the side of those who believe in progressive taxation and public spending - but with those who favour tax cuts for the rich and what’s left for the rest”.

 

Now, remind me again… what happened to income tax rates effective 6 April? Oh, yes – the starting rate was doubled for the lowest earners, and cut by 2p for everyone else. So, that'll be a tax cut for the rich, and what’s left for the rest earning below £18,500? A higher tax bill…

 

Does Labour's hypocrisy and willingness to tell porkies about their opponents know no bounds? At least the SNP's local income tax would put some of the money back in the pockets of the least well off that Gordon Brown has just swiped away.

 

One More Heave

 

There’s a scene in ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’, where the news reaches Blackadder’s loyal but dim colleague, Lt. George St Barleigh, that Blackadder’s plane has been shot down over German-held territory. With George refusing point-blank to acknowledge the strong likelihood that Blackadder may be dead, General Melchett utters the immortal line:

 

"That's the spirit, George. If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through."

 

A similar mentality seems to be manifesting itself amongst the Scottish Labour Party. They’ve been cheated out of power and the SNP government is just a horrible nightmare, from which Labour will wake at the next election. The SNP doesn’t understand the modern world, apparently. The constitutional debate can be resolved by 'expert' committee, and a solution handed down to a populace which will remain eternally grateful for being spared the burden of being asked their opinion beforehand. We also stand on the verge of unprecedented prosperity, apparently, but it’s all now being put at risk by those wicked Nats.

 

The SNP is 'right wing’ when it gets the support of the Conservatives, yet Labour remains pure and true when allied with the same party on different issues. Ending ringfenced funding in local government is a cut in SNP run Scotland, but represents progress in Labour run England. Budgets already enacted still apparently don’t add up. Labour will be in the ‘front line of defence’ for vulnerable groups they never appeared to care much for previously. And Wendy Alexander will be the next First Minister - why, she’s even given herself 10/10 for her performance as leader in a BBC interview. What a shame about that minus 22% popularity rating, though…

 

Luckily, there’s a more sober assessment from a former Labour member available to those in the party with a better grasp on reality. Gerry Hassan, writing beforehand in the Scotsman, punctured elegantly Scottish Labour’s delusions of adequacy and sense of entitlement.

 

Labour became about maintenance of power for power’s sake, and now seems to stand for very little, he says. He even likens the Scottish party to UK Labour pre-1983 - in need of a second defeat before it faces up to its essential unpopularity. His only words of 'comfort' come when he says that “The party can take succour from the fact that it is doing everything in its power to head to that second defeat”.

 

I was speaking with a friend the other night on the phone, and we tried to discern what Labour’s strategy in Scotland might actually be. Listening to Brown’s dreary and turgid address to the Labour conference in Aviemore, I think that my friend was bang on the money in her assessment that Labour’s only gameplan is to try and chip away niche support, in the hope that it transfers to them. ‘Load the blunderbuss with whatever you have, and never mind if most of the shrapnel explodes in your face’, goes the command. ‘As long as some of it hits the Nats we’ll count that as progress!’

 

The recent attacks on the SNP’s plans for a local income tax have been particularly silly. We’ve been told that it’s outwith the competence of the Scottish Parliament to ask for such a tax to be levied – despite the facts that HMRC can collect income taxes on behalf of Holyrood currently, and the Scotland Act being explicit that the Scottish Parliament is in control of local taxation. We’ve also been told that the sums won’t add up because existing Council Tax Benefit payments will be withheld – this despite HM Treasury’s latest ‘Statement of Funding Principles’ document making it clear that this benefit is to be regarded post-devolution as part of the Scottish funding block!

 

But what about the ‘vision thing’? Well, it seems to be very much as you were with the fears and smears. An independent Scotland won’t get into Europe, according to Jim Murphy. The SNP want us to paint our faces blue and take us back 300 years. You’ll never see your English auntie again. And while interdependence means UK financial markets are buffeted by trends in the USA, a sovereign Scotland would somehow be isolated from all that’s good, and at the mercy of all that’s bad.

 

Meanwhile, in accentuating the positive, Gordon Brown’s old school had a motto, he met someone who’ll compete at the Olympics, John Smeaton’s a great guy, his cabinet colleagues get to meet ministers and officials from other countries (presumably not narrow ones, though). Global environmental problems can’t be solved by any part of Britain on its own, but can apparently be solved by Britain in isolation. Oh, and they don’t get paid very much in China for making iPods. All of which apparently serve as reasons why we should vote Labour.

 

I feel weary even writing about this, because it’s all such complete and utter rubbish, and because it’s practically identical to the arguments which Labour trotted out in the run up to last May’s election. If a definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results’, there would appear to have been the most acute of mass episodes taking place in Aviemore.