Yikes. The closer we get to the election, the worse the polling gets for Scottish Labour:

 

 

They really need to hide Jim Murphy (and keep Miliband south of the border) and wheel out Gordon Brown at any opportunity from now until election day. The Scottish polling has got worse for Labour since Murphy took over, in a timeframe when the UK-wide Labour polling has got slightly better.

 

Is that a Tory gain??

 

Overall I think this view of the 45% who voted Yes is quite patronising, clearly unionists still haven't learned why they voted yes. Their comeuppance will come on May 7th unfort. If the SNP win more than 40 seats it'll be the biggest political change in uk politics since 1918.

Is that a Tory gain??

Yeah, but it's a. a Lib Dem seat, and b. the Tories, SNP and Lib Dems are all polling in the margin of error there.

With a margin on 1% though. Can't see that remaining a tory gain come May 7th

Yikes. The closer we get to the election, the worse the polling gets for Scottish Labour:

 

 

They really need to hide Jim Murphy (and keep Miliband south of the border) and wheel out Gordon Brown at any opportunity from now until election day. The Scottish polling has got worse for Labour since Murphy took over, in a timeframe when the UK-wide Labour polling has got slightly better.

Oooh my seat is there!

 

LibDem vote holding up much better than I expected it would actually. The 'other' being down 1% is most likely due to UKIP not standing here this time. (HURRAH!)

Better not get another Tory seat, il be disappointed if it is - berkshires near the border isn't it?

Overall I think this view of the 45% who voted Yes is quite patronising, clearly unionists still haven't learned why they voted yes.

The SNP have basically managed to convert the whole 45% over to become SNP voters though - there's not really much you can do to switch people back from a position that's essentially an article of faith in the space of seven months, and 45% would smash pretty much any first past the post voting system with more than two parties anywhere.

There's rather a lot of SNP supporters who voted No back in September, so it's not just the 45% that make up their support.

 

For the record. The people on this side of the border will decide what is best for them and their future. If you don't live here then you can't possibly know the realities of life in Scotland so please stop f***ing telling us how to vote, how to live and what is best for us. We'll decide that thank you very much and if you don't like it we will happily take our oil and f*** off.

 

(For all this talk about the Scottish Government deficit running at 7.8% in the event of fiscal autonomy, has anyone worked out what the rUK one would be once you strip out Scottish Tax revenues? Without Oil the UK would be in a serious hole so lets not pretend it's only an Independent/fiscally autonomous Scotland that suffers from downside risk with Oil.)

Better not get another Tory seat, il be disappointed if it is - berkshires near the border isn't it?

Yes. Its the seat directly to the right of the current tory seat. Part of the posh Edinburgh commuter belt.

 

Given that the SNP are reopening the rail link the Tories shut, i'd expect this to end up an SNP gain rather than a Tory gain.

So it's all just because of labour supporting the no camp last sept then?

So it's all just because of labour supporting the no camp last sept then?

Personally I believe there are 3 reasons for the drop in Labour support and the rise of the SNP.

 

1 - They've been in government here since 2007 and are doing a fairly decent job of it. Even before I switched sides and was anti-SNP I couldn't deny they'd done a great job.

 

2 - General disillusionment with the Westminster establishment that cares more about what happens inside the M25 than out of it and even less about the other side of Hadrian's Wall.

 

3 - The referendum. While the SNP lost, their entire campaign was built on a positive message of a brighter future. Labour stood hand in hand with the Tories who are utterly hated throughout large swathes of the central belt. This isn't the sole cause of the switch though. It's likely to be the switch in Westminster allegiances. The SNP took massive chunks out of Labour and the LibDems in 2011 at Holyrood.

 

!

 

Okay that one's genuinely news to me.

 

I'd still like to know exactly what part of the platform he's on you're taking issue with - I can't see Neil Findlay having said literally anything different from the likes of the things Jim's been promising so far.

 

You're right, i don't disagree with most of what he's been saying on the issues from what I've seen - hilarious and ironic though his conversion to anti-austerity is.

 

Tbh, the main problem is him. He could be a great backroom strategist for all I know, but he just isn't a frontman, even less so than Ed is. His voice and stage presence in interviews is so boring and droning -- it's shallow and unfair, yes, but it's still going to be a deal-breaker for most people whether they even listen to what he's got to say.

 

 

 

With a margin on 1% though. Can't see that remaining a tory gain come May 7th

 

Oooh my seat is there!

 

LibDem vote holding up much better than I expected it would actually. The 'other' being down 1% is most likely due to UKIP not standing here this time. (HURRAH!)

 

I really should've bet on whether Labour would even save their deposit in NE Fife rather than them winning it outright...

 

Do you know if your seat voted for independence? (I know Fife as a whole was 55/45 against but don't know how each area broke down.)

 

For the record. The people on this side of the border will decide what is best for them and their future. If you don't live here then you can't possibly know the realities of life in Scotland so please stop f***ing telling us how to vote, how to live and what is best for us. We'll decide that thank you very much and if you don't like it we will happily take our oil and f*** off.

Nah mate. Same country and all, we reserve the same right to express an opinion on how people vote in Scotland as we do on how they vote in Yorkshire, Wales, and the Home Counties. That result last September was a No - you are British. I wouldn't presume to say to any Scot that they had no right to say how people in the rest of the UK should vote - indeed, Sturgeon and Salmond have.

(For all this talk about the Scottish Government deficit running at 7.8% in the event of fiscal autonomy, has anyone worked out what the rUK one would be once you strip out Scottish Tax revenues? Without Oil the UK would be in a serious hole so lets not pretend it's only an Independent/fiscally autonomous Scotland that suffers from downside risk with Oil.)

Except we're not the ones advocating independence. Saying the UK would be worse off if Scotland left doesn't really work as a criticism when the point is that we're (KLAXON) better together.

2 - General disillusionment with the Westminster establishment that cares more about what happens inside the M25 than out of it and even less about the other side of Hadrian's Wall.

Are you trying to claim large parts of England for Scotland? :o

I really should've bet on whether Labour would even save their deposit in NE Fife rather than them winning it outright...

 

Do you know if your seat voted for independence? (I know Fife as a whole was 55/45 against but don't know how each area broke down.)

They'll keep their deposit easily. Labour vote round here should hold up to about 10% i reckon.

 

I've not seen the breakdown for Fife. I would imagine that we would have voted No (St Andrews, more affluent than county average, RAF base, Farmers + a lot of old people) and counterbalanced central Fife saying Yes. Think Dunfermline & West Fife would have voted No too (Edi commuter belt, more affluent).

 

 

Nah mate. Same country and all, we reserve the same right to express an opinion on how people vote in Scotland as we do on how they vote in Yorkshire, Wales, and the Home Counties. That result last September was a No - you are British. I wouldn't presume to say to any Scot that they had no right to say how people in the rest of the UK should vote - indeed, Sturgeon and Salmond have.

You're not expressing an opinion though you're trying to dictate to us. It doesn't matter what that f***ing vote said. This is not about that damned referendum. Not everything up here is related to that one bloody event or revolves around its outcome. The reason your party is facing a wipe out here is because people like you have dictated to us what they think is best for us when they couldn't be further off the mark. We have different societal problems, different social attitudes and a need for different solutions. The one size fits all approach doesn't work. Our government does fine with the devolved areas but there are so many problems in the reserved areas that are not being addressed properly because of the main parties London centric bias that it then forces upon us.

 

 

Except we're not the ones advocating independence. Saying the UK would be worse off if Scotland left doesn't really work as a criticism when the point is that we're (KLAXON) better together.

Given that it's a scaremongering tactic being hastily screamed by Murphy whenever there is a microphone in range of his oversized trap it's a fair point. They are saying Fiscal autonomy would make Scotland worse off than rUK, i'm curious to know if that's actually true or if we'd both be worse off.

 

Are you trying to claim large parts of England for Scotland? :o

Just the bits that we're ours first. You can keep Carlisle.

Nah mate. Same country and all, we reserve the same right to express an opinion on how people vote in Scotland as we do on how they vote in Yorkshire, Wales, and the Home Counties. That result last September was a No - you are British. I wouldn't presume to say to any Scot that they had no right to say how people in the rest of the UK should vote - indeed, Sturgeon and Salmond have.

 

You are beginning to sound like unionists in N.Ireland coming out with stuff like that...

You are beginning to sound like unionists in N.Ireland coming out with stuff like that...

If anything the concept of 'you people don't have a right to comment on our politics' is more of a unionist idea, given that was their line to both the British and Irish governments during the Troubles.

 

But yes, I am an unashamed (British) unionist, and deeply resent the idea (that has just been rejected) that only Scottish people have the right to comment on Scottish affairs. It's a fucking poisonous idea, and it's the normalisation of that idea that is exactly what the SNP want, because it separates Scotland from the rest of the nation.

In reality though I think the surge for the SNP is much more complex than looking at internal British politics the same is happening across Europe with Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece.

 

2015 is very much like 1935(in an economic sense, hopefully not in a political sense). When a lot especially the centre right parties are advocating austerity policies and there are more left wing parties advocating Keynesianism.

Just the bits that we're ours first. You can keep Carlisle.

Perhaps we should start reclaiming bits of France :P

Given that it's a scaremongering tactic being hastily screamed by Murphy whenever there is a microphone in range of his oversized trap it's a fair point. They are saying Fiscal autonomy would make Scotland worse off than rUK, i'm curious to know if that's actually true or if we'd both be worse off.

Of course fiscal autonomy will make Scotland worse off than it currently is (which is the point being made specifically, not that it'll be worse off than the rest of the UK) - if you don't want to take that from me, take it from the SNP's projections for fiscal autonomy which were based on oil prices being double what they are now, and double what they'll likely be for the foreseeable future. It'd need either taxes, cuts, or large deficits during a time of growth. Sturgeon already has rights to adjust the former and has done nothing and has ruled out the latter two. Something would have to give with oil prices as they are.

In reality though I think the surge for the SNP is much more complex than looking at internal British politics the same is happening across Europe with Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece.

 

2015 is very much like 1935(in an economic sense, hopefully not in a political sense). When a lot especially the centre right parties are advocating austerity policies and there are more left wing parties advocating Keynesianism.

Labour is advocating Keynesianism. Keynes specifically made the point that you reduce the deficit in times of growth to fund stimulus in times of recession. He was never about permanent deficits, and given how many on the left idolise him it's surprising how few seem to grasp that.