As the Great Helmsman prepares to let his bottom lip wobble for perhaps the final time, maybe this gem in the New Statesman, scribed by NuLab's favoured pollster, Phillip Gould, will help you overcome the urge to wail and gnash your teeth at our impending plunge into eternal spiritual darkness.
In my case, it lifted my despair so much that I may have ruptured several of my organs in the process. I'll miss you both, Tony and Phillip, but not for the reasons you'd like to think :-)
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4 comments:
I really am stunned into disbelief by this article. What planet was the writer on? It certainly bears no relation whatsover to life in this universe. Amazing, beyond belief. Incidentally, one potential explanation for the reduced percentage lead might be the spoiled ballots that had both SNP and greens marked...
Anyway this article is truly astonishing.
Really stunning....
It's incredible, isn't it?
"This was a campaign that showed Labour at its best".
"Tony Blair magnificent, leading from the front, finding exactly the right words, always able to change the political weather". Like suggesting that George Matthewson was self-indulgent and not a real businessman, for example?
"Gordon Brown like a tank, indomitable, raging against the possibility of defeat, generating ideas and implementing them with an energy that was breathtaking".
"Douglas Alexander, pathologically determined to win, displaying that infuriating determination of purpose that is the mark of great campaigners. And Jack McConnell, so often criticised, but who never showed the slightest loss of nerve, in the end finding a street-fighting demeanour that made Salmond's helicopter tours look arrogant and presumptuous".
And my favourite: "Even after it was announced that we had lost, they still believed something could be done". As General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett once said: "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!"
Bending facts to suit your case is commonplace, but inventing facts THEN bending them, requires extraordinary compartmentalising and mental agility! Truly, the man is a national treasure.
I have to say that I read this with a certain amount of incredulity and I cannot deny having burst out laughing on more than one occasion.
However, they do know how to hold seats when they perceive that they're up against it. You guys should have won Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and Aberdeen Central to name but two.
I never thought Labour would do as badly as the polls suggested nor did I think that the SNP would do as well. At no point were Labour ever headed for wipeout - not at this election, anyway.
The way to really stuff them is to provide good, stable, honest, mature, intelligent and responsible government over the next 4 years. Can the SNP deliver?
I certainly hope so, Caron. I don't think many people realise what a big risk the SNP is taking by moving into government, and in doing so, just how far the SNP has moved on from being the wounded, mistrustful beast that limped through much of the 1980's.
In my view, government is a necessary and desirable step for the SNP. Nevertheless, it comes with the big chance that it, or others, will somehow contrive to foul things up to the extent that some wider SNP beliefs become discredited in the public mind.
On a uniform swing, the SNP certianly should have won the seats you mention. My own theory, based on nothing more scientific than conjecture and gut prejudice, is that the Record and Sun resulted in sufficient tactical voting to hold back the SNP (they each printed lists in the final week of the top 10 & 20 seats respectively where people should vote to 'save the union').
It would certainly explain why seats like Galloway (target number 1, sadly...) and Linlithgow (number 9) failed to succumb to SNP charms, while seats like Edinburgh East (30) and Falkirk West (62) did. In the event, we chalked off just 4 of out top 10, but managed 6 of the next 10.
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