Articles by Mandy Rhodes
As Labour and the SNP continue to vie over who won the council elections, it will be how those parties respond to that result that will inform the referendum debate rather than the result per se. And early indications are that the FM considers it job well done while Johann Lamont continues to express a gracious humility that can only be to Labour’s advantage given their previous gross complacency.
For regardless of what the SNP says now, there are lessons to be learned from what went wrong on 3 May. The party undoubtedly made the local government elections a battleground for the referendum; instead of talking local, they talked global, instead of listening to what they were being told on the doorsteps, they listened to each other and they batted away criticism – even from their own candidates – like a negative contagion being spread by pro-unionists out to spoil their fun.
With their interminable tweeting and retweeting of each other’s opinions, they did nothing other than affirm each other’s self-importance with messages about ‘insightful’ and ‘thought provoking’ pieces of party pap dressed up as journalism, and blogs that said more about them than it did about the electorate. And yes, while the psephologists will argue that there were great gains for the SNP, in that they won the largest share of the vote, gained the greatest number of councillors and managed a spread of support throughout the country that meant they could justifiably talk about being the national party of Scotland, the problem remains that on the Friday after the election, the SNP foot soldiers felt they had won the war but lost a battle.
And while the party hierarchy may continue to revel in their increasingly irritating positivity agenda, where nothing but good, great and lovely is allowed to infiltrate, they ignore the doubts and fears that are being expressed not just on the doorsteps but in the boardrooms, editorial conferences, civic halls a...
Continue reading...
Pat Watters signs off from local government after clocking up 30 years as an elected councillor As Scotland’s newest intake of councillors adjust to a radically altered local government landscape, dominated by coalitions of all stripes, Pat Watters, the doyen of local politics, is relaxing on a sun lounger on the Costa del Sol considering his future over a glass or two of vino. Watters, in an interview with Holyrood two years ago, announced his intention to depart local government politics after more than 11 years at the helm of COSLA as first, Vice- President and then, President. He said then that he simply did not want ‘to outstay my welcome’. Speaking to Holyrood last week, in his final interview before leaving office, he admitted, tearfully, that while he may [...]
The furore in the letters pages of Scotland’s newspapers that has predictably followed the revelation that the SNP is to debate the issue of membership (or not) of Nato at its National Council gathering in June is tired, inflated and reactionary. Accusations of yet another Salmond U-turn are being bandied about as evidence of the SNP’s ability to sway with the wind as long as it brings the party votes in a referendum – but, frankly, it rings a little hollow on this particular issue. The SNP’s attitude to Nato was formed during its many years in opposition. Years when it could pick away at the scab of Britishness, years when it could seethe at Scotland not having a seat at the top table [on anything] and years away from [...]
He may have once been the youngest SNP councillor, the youngest group leader and the youngest head of a Scottish council, but Derek Mackay says he and the party have come of age At a recent government meeting Alex Salmond laughingly referred to his newly appointed Minister for Local Government and Planning as precocious. Derek Mackay looked around the table at his ministerial colleagues and laughed nervously before going to check a dictionary to see whether the FM was praising him or cutting him down to size. As it happens Salmond was simply joining in the friendly banter that has stalked MacKay throughout his meteoric political journey and the FM was complimenting his minister and convener of the party on the enthusiastic but perhaps slightly premature way he closed the party conference when he told members to much [...]
Respect’s stunning avalanche of a victory in the Bradford West by-election was as spectacular as the commentary that has followed. Two weeks on and a whole dictionary of superlatives has been used to find the words to try to adequately express the shock at George Galloway’s exceptional parliamentary win. Everything from ‘it was the Muslims wot won it’ through to it being an apolitical backlash to a residual anti-war expression have been postulated yet none of the political commentariat has credited the electorate with the wit nor wisdom to make the right choice, for the right reasons and at the right time. For reasons that remain at best oblique, George Galloway is seen as an untrustworthy and divisive character and that appears to have blinded commentators to the fact that [...]
