Calman, Have A Go If You Think You’re Hard Enough

Another Scots Independent column, albeit one somewhat overtaken by events - the 'Lib/Lab suicide pact', as one of my colleagues put it upon hearing the news that Nicol Stephen had followed Wendy onto his party's backbenches.

Still, the thrust of it still stands - However much they might wish it otherwise, the devol-unionist blethering classes can't simply wish away support for independence; it's high time we learned what 'more powers' might actually mean; and that while the Calman Commission may indeed turn out to be a crock, it's still a gift for the SNP.


Do you remember the Calman Commission? Oh, come on… pay attention at the back, there. The Calman Commission – the one the unionist parties set up to produce options for constitutional change, right after they’d spent an entire election campaign saying no such changes were needed? The one which is now costing you as a Scottish taxpayer some £500,000? Still nothing? Oh, well…

This abstraction of your hard earned tax money started life as a plain ‘review’ before becoming, to the reported irritation of Gordon Brown, a ‘Commission’ on the future of Scottish devolution. Meantime, the Scottish Government’s ‘National Conversation’ on the future governance of Scotland continued along its merry way, boycotted by those behind Commission for supposedly being a ‘front’ for Independence.

There’s a crucial difference between the two processes, though. While the Government’s ‘Conversation’ has remained open to the possibility of people opting for a ‘settlement’ which falls short of Independence, Calman has excluded the independence option from the outset.

Amusingly, the first set of minutes state that “the Commission starts from the position that Scotland should remain a distinctive part of the United Kingdom”, before immediately contradicting itself by saying “The Commission will consider the distribution of powers between the Scottish Parliament and Westminster without preconceptions”. So, no preconceptions at all, then, except for those they already have…

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Commission was set up in response to, and with the sole intention of trying to stymie the Scottish Government’s National Conversation. However, despite the shared aim of stuffing the SNP which exists in Labour in Holyrood and Westminster, the Commission has since its inception struggled to gain acceptance in Westminster.

The lack of enthusiasm for constitutional change starts from Gordon Brown down. Backbench Labour MPs are openly scathing, not least because they can see the erratic and unreliable hand of Wendy Alexander on the tiller, and because seeing themselves, as they do as still being ‘in charge’ of Scotland, they feel this is playing into the SNP’s hands.

In a sense, they’re absolutely right. If it hadn’t been for the SNP taking power, the Commission would never have been established so to that extent, its existence and the willingness of unionist parties to consider further powers is testament to their fear of being left behind by public opinion.

However, the most troublesome questions are not concerned with the principal of ‘more powers’ – that bit is easy. Rather, it’s the question of ‘which powers’ that is about to bedevil participants. I can’t wait to see how the respective positions of no-change unionists are reconciled with the federalist position of the Lib Dems. They may agree on what they don’t like – independence and the SNP – but what is it that they actually do agree on? And what about engaging with the public? Well, you know, I get the feeling that we’re not really all that welcome.

Public meetings have been ruled out as being too easily ‘hijacked’, and submissions which stray beyond the remit of the Commission (i.e. mention independence), may not even be published. The ‘experts’ on the Commission, some no doubt selected for their ability to bring empty minds to the problem, will deliberate, ruminate and cogitate. They will then hand down their findings to a populace which will remain forever grateful for being spared the temptations of independence, or the burden of being asked their opinion in advance.

That said, it’s still hard for me to see how the cause of independence can emerge from this twin processes of Calman and Conversation anything other than enhanced. Since the SNP took power, a direction of travel has clearly been established on constitutional reform and expectations set accordingly. Already, the Commission has every indication of resulting in a soggy, lowest common denominator compromise which satisfies none of the participants, let alone the rising aspirations of the voting public. It’s elitist, exclusive, top-down and prescriptive – the very antithesis of the democratic processes which were supposed to become the hallmarks of the new Scotland.


But here’s the rub. Since by definition the SNP will agree with every power recommended for northward transfer by Calman, to a large extent the Calman participants will be doing our work for us. For the SNP, the outcome will never be enough, but for Labour, the outcome is one on which they will never be able to agree as a final destination. And unlike independence, whatever Calman produces can’t be delivered without the consent of non-Scottish MPs.

On present evidence, that support is almost entirely absent. If Calman runs into the sand just before the 2010 Independence referendum, the British state will have been shown to be incapable of further reform, and people will cast their votes accordingly. On the other hand, if it does come up with a package of proposals, it will just whet the appetite for what seems likely to come. All told, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a win, win for the SNP.

Much as some might wish it otherwise, the issue of Independence won’t disappear on a whim of the devol-unionist blethering classes. There’s nothing so powerful in politics as an idea whose time has come and if those behind Calman really wanted to remove the legitimacy of a move for Independence in this Parliamentary session, they should have taken part in the Conversation so that the resultant fell some way short of what the SNP may have liked.

But they haven’t, and all told, that’s probably for the best. Calman was, in a former guise, the Chief Medical Officer for England. For a medical man, he seems to be taking an awful long time to recognise that his patient's case is terminal.

Wendy and Labour - Bitter To The End

I can't say its a huge surprise, but Wendy Alexander has this morning quit as the Leader of Labour in the Scottish Parliament.

Throughout, she and her aides have twisted and spun to try to put the best possible gloss on what was, let's not forget, a deliberate attempt to keep campaign donations secret. The law was broken, and while I think it merited only the sort of token admonishment she received from the Standards Committee on Thursday, even then, Labour seemed unable to accept fault.

Instead of bluster about honesty and integrity and lack of 'intentional wrongdoing', she should simply have put up her hands and accepted the hit. Had she done so, she may have started to show a human side which hitherto has often seemed to rather drift in and out of focus.

Labour is trying to blame the SNP for this - everyone, in fact, but themselves. This is cant, pure and simple. Wendy and her team were the architects of their own misfortune, and the briefing against her came from within her own party throughout. I've no doubt that she's pretty bright, certainly by the standards of her colleagues, but ultimately, it's her unfortunate personal style, lack of attention to detail and inability to take others with her that has been her political undoing.

This is a personal tragedy, but it's also one of her own making. My sympathy would be complete and entire, if only there would be some recognition in Team Wendy that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the horrible nasty Nats who turned her over. The answers, as ever in Labour, lie much closer to home.

Monday Caption Contest

Busy week ahead on just about every front, so in lieu of proper blogging, here's a caption competition for you all:


Fire at will...

Wendy and Douglas - Right All Along!

At the last election, Wendy and Douglas Alexander claimed that an SNP Government would cause chaos and confusion over an independence referendum; would force the ‘average family’ to forfeit nearly £1,000 more of their hard-earned income to the government; and would split families apart north and south of the border.

One year on, I see now that it was all true. Only, who would have sussed that the Alexander siblings were describing their own impending fate and that of the Labour Party, rather than that of Scotland?

Gordon Brown - Robin Hood In Reverse

As I said last week, I gave Wendy Alexander's Aviemore Conference speech a miss in favour of an afternoon in the pub watching the Celtic-Rangers game. It's therefore with thanks to the Man About The House Blog I stumbled across earlier today that I am able to offer you this little gem from her speech:

“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's 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.

Rhodes To Hell Paved With Good Intentions

From Holyrood Magazine (The Scottish Parliament's version of Westminster's 'House Magazine', only more interesting) - an interview with Wendy Alexander. Go on - don your crash helmet and take a read.

Before getting involved in politics, I had no conception of how people's words could be edited sympathetically for TV and radio, or polished up by journalists and stenographers before they reach the public domain. Wendy's clearly been left to perform unplugged here by the magazine, and boy does it show.

What shines through is how the interviewer, Editor Mandy Rhodes, seems desperate to try and give Wendy as fair a crack of the whip as she can, yet in the end, just gives up. That in itself is as revealing as anything which Ms Alexander manages to say, or not to say, in the course of the interview...

Alexander 'To Go On SNP Offensive'

With particular emphasis on the 'offensive', no doubt. Anyway, like most adult Scots males of my age and fighting weight, I'm going to give Wendy a miss to go and watch the fitba' instead.

Rangers v Celtic... it's a bit like Ken v Boris as far as I'm concerned. The contest will be full of thrills and spills no doubt, but for me it's still a case of may the worst one lose!

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 as it gathers for its conference in Aviemore. 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 scaremongeringdefence’ 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 today. 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 in today’s Scotsman, punctures 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 this afternoon, 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!’

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. The SNP want 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’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 be the most acute of mass episodes taking place currently in Aviemore.

The Wheel Is Spinning, But...

It says much about the state of Wendy Alexander's leadership of Labour in the Scottish Parliament that the best news she's had in months is that she's not going to jail. Deck the halls, hosanna in exelsis, let joy be unconfined etc ad nauseum... somehow, though, a wiping of the brow and a sigh of relief seem more appropriate than champagne in the circumstances.

The Electoral Commission has delivered what is probably the right outcome, but by wholly inappropriate means. Their role should have been to establish if there had been a breach of the law (the Actus Reus – which in this case was admitted freely) and from there, to arrange the forfeiture of the donation before reporting matters to the Procurator Fiscal, who could then determine if there was also the guilty mind, or Mens Rea, which together are required for a criminal offence to have taken place.

For what it's worth, I don't reckon any Fiscal in the land would have taken matters further, but that's not really the point. Instead, we now have the ridiculous sight of Wendy proclaiming self-righteously that "My honesty and integrity have been confirmed by this judgment." Er, no they haven't, Wendy. The law was broken, but the Commission didn't find “sufficient evidence” to suggest an attempt to conceal the impermissible donation. That's hardly the same thing.

The ruling offers no certification as to the soundness of her reputation, which as far as I'm concerned, is no whiter or indeed sullied than it was before. I really couldn't care less how she sees herself in this regard. Rather, it's the attitude, the hubris, the attempted blame-shifting and sheer unadulterated insouciance towards the whole thing which gets up my nose, and I suspect those of a great many others. In this case, 'sorry' really does seem to be the hardest word.

But to our tale. She got creamed again yesterday at First Minister's Questions and made a complete and utter sow's ear of her party's approach to the budget, laughably failing to vote for the motion which her party had already amended successfully. If there's only been 'not much' in the way of backstabbing, it can only be because Labour is so bereft of talent in Holyrood that there really is no-one else who could take over at the moment.

I'll go further. Bluntly, I don't think that the next Labour First Minister has even been elected yet to the Scottish Parliament. As for Wendy, she now has to get Labour acting like a sensible opposition and make a show of getting people behind her proposed reforms to the Labour Party – no mean feat given the way she's managed to alienate the party's MP's, Councilors and even the cheerleaders over at Pravda the Daily Record.

In reality, I suspect that no matter what she tries to do now, she's going to get nowhere fast because quite simply, she lacks the necessary clout and respect both within and without her party. The wheel might be spinning, but that hamster looks dead to me...

Fiscal Rectitude

So - Wendy Alexander has been reported to the Procurator Fiscal by the Scottish Parliament's Standards Commissioner, for not declaring the campaign donations she received in the Scottish Parliament's register of interests.

While there may be some confusion about the initial advice she received from the relevant Parliamentary Authorities, there's still one big question left for me this morning: Why has the Standards Commissioner been able to deal with this so quickly, while the Electoral Commission is still faffing around trying to decide what to do with her case?

The Electoral Commission really isn't doing Wendy, or the rest of us, any favours by sitting on this one. If there's something unpleasant to be done, then better it were done quickly...

Light Blogging...

...this week for a variety of reasons, none of which need detain us here. However, I do urge you to take a look at this post from Scottish Tory Boy, which leaves Nicol Stephen looking rather silly, after giving his synthetic 'Mr Angry' act another outing at First Minister's Questions.

Also due for a mention is Kezia Dugdale, who is effusive in her praise for Wendy Alexander's performance this week. In all honesty, apart from her from not being completely dreadful this week, I don't see what Labour really have to cheer about. It all seemed pretty ho-hum to me. Maybe it's the equivalent of applauding wildly, just because your team wins a throw-in deep in their own half when they're already 6-0 down... :-)

"The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Is On Fire..."

So. Wendy Alexander's Labour leadership campaign team accepted an illegal payment from property developer Paul Green, one of several donations which came in suspiciously below the £1,000 threshold at which the identity of a donor would have to be revealed by law. Initially, Wendy claimed not to have known about this until 1pm on Thursday last week. Once the details were revealed, the man who had solicited the donation, Charlie Gordon MSP, did the decent thing and took a tumble for his troubles.

And that was supposed to be that. However, the donation was illegal because it had come in the form of a personal cheque from Mr Green, who was not actually eligible to vote in the UK. Nonetheless, Wendy was in the clear, we were told, because she had been informed (incorrectly) that the donation had come via a UK based company, which would have made the donation legitimate had this been the case.

It then emerged on Friday that she had written a 'thank you' note to Mr Green back in October. Given that she wrote to him personally rather than via the company he was said to be donating "under the auspices" of, and that she did so to an address outside the UK, this gave us the first hint that we perhaps weren't being told the whole truth by Team Wendy.

Today, it emerged that her letter to Mr Green notwithstanding, she may have known at least three weeks ago that the donation was illegal. As a regulated donee, she bears ultimate responsibility for the donations she has received. As such, she has broken the law, and is now looking down the barrel of a criminal investigation, a prison sentence and potentially, an unlimited fine. Regardless as to the outcome of any deliberations by the Electoral Commission, her credibility is shot through entirely. Press statements might not be delivered under oath, but if she thinks the Scottish press pack has been merciless, just wait until Strathclyde CID come knocking on her door.

Yet in spite of this tissue of lies and deceit, Wendy is going to stay on as Leader of the Labour Group in the Scottish Parliament, because there was no "intentional wrongdoing" and she is "confident" of being exonerated. In fact, you get the feeling that she feels a duty - an obligation even - to stay on. In her own words:

"I offered myself to lead Labour in the Scottish Parliament in the autumn because I believed and continue to believe I have a contribution to make to improve the lives of my fellow Scots".


Now, I don't want to kick someone when they're down, but this really is complete and utter humbug. The pressure to stay has nothing to do with her much-vaunted sense of mission, and everything to do with her loyalty to Gordon Brown. Consider - Wendy's timbers are now well alight, but if she falls, she'll take Harriet Harman crashing down with her (who knowingly accepted an illegal donation 5 times larger than the one causing Wendy so much difficulty just now). If that happens, the part of the barn currently sheltering Gordon Brown will quickly catch light also. And if that comes to pass, the government will be consumed in an inferno so intense that Labour will be able to salvage nothing - nothing - from the remains.

Tough choice - resign and bring your political mentor down with you, or hang on in post to try and protect him, and destroy your party's credibility in the eyes of Scottish voters? Like I said, I don't want to kick someone when they're down, but I do find it hard to feel much sympathy for her. The rules on political donations brought in by Labour are simple to follow, and were, in the main, designed with no higher principle in mind other than to stuff their political opponents. 'To be hoist by one's own petard', is, I believe, le mot juste.

TIMELINE: Courtesy of BBC News Online

"Sit down, and behave yourself, Sit down..."

I went out to watch the Scotland-Ukraine game yesterday in the Rob Roy. After getting drenched by other people's spilled drinks twice inside the first ten minutes, we decided to adjourn to the bar across the road for the second half. It was packed as well, but you could at least get served and move your arms. But when goal number three went in, this place erupted as well.

Fair to say the landlady wasn't best pleased. However, karma was restored when one guy standing on the seats and ignoring the landlady's requests to get down, was subject to a collective musical admonishment from the rest of the pub of "Sit down, and behave yourself!". Result? One shame-faced fan, newly positioned on his rear end, and one landlady now beaming from ear to ear.

There's been a few other people who could have benefited from similar injunctions this week. No sooner had the Comprehensive Spending Review been announced, before Labour figures were out and about spinning that this was a remarkable financial settlement for Scotland, but that the SNP wouldn't be able to meet their spending commitments. Labour good, SNP bad. Four legs good etc ad nauseum.

I'd have thought that they might have confined themselves to boasting of their own financial prowess, rather than trying to slate anyone else. However, it all fell to bits for them as the Scottish Government was able to show that the £7.2bn figure over 3 years being trumpeted by, amongst others, Scottish Secretary Des Brown, didn't take account of inflation; was calculated from a spending baseline reduced in advance (thus making any spending increases look bigger than they actually were); and relied on the old Labour trick of double and triple counting money (year 1, plus year 1 plus year 2, plus year 1 plus year 2 plus year 3 - great, eh?).

Next up, it was Hilary Benn and DEFRA. Despite being a mainly English department, animal welfare is a reserved issue, meaning that when there's compensation to be paid out as a result of the restrictions from foot and mouth disease, it's DEFRA that has to foot the bill. No ifs, no buts - that's how it works and that's how it is in the Scotland Act.

Due to the movement restrictions and the current export ban, there are tens of thousands of sheep, in particular the 'light lambs' bred for export to southern Europe, now facing starvation due to lack of fodder. Because the grazing and climatic conditions are different in Scotland to most of England, a herculean effort was made to try and convince English Ministers and officials that unless action was taken, sheep would be left starving to death on the hillsides.

Scottish Agriculture Minister Richard Lochhead tried to contact Hilary Benn at least 3 times last week, but not once were his calls returned. Strange, you might think, when in a draft statement from Friday to be delivered to the Commons on Monday, Benn was planning to announce an £8.1m package for Scottish farmers which had been agreed by the Treasury. However, by the time the statement was made, the compensation scheme was announced for England only, with the devolved administrations being told to fund, at least initially, their own disposal schemes.

Of course, that Friday everyone was expecting a general election, but by the Monday, Gordon Brown had called the whole thing off. A coincidence? Well, I'm more inclined than most to give people the benefit of the doubt, since cock-up is usually a lot more prevalent in most organisations than conspiracy. But here, the Westminster government has been caught bang to rights, and their squeals of indignation at being rumbled are as ridiculous as they are unjustified.

We've got junior nobodies in Westminster jumping up and down, fulminating about 'breaches of confidence', and 'playing politics'. We've even had some silly suggestions that the Scotland Office will henceforth vet all government documents 'to make sure Alex Salmond can't make mischief with them', and a lot of hand-wringing nonsense about how bad relations now are between the Scottish Government and Scotland Office, which of course is all the fault of the SNP.

Well, the 'vetting' initiative will last about a week, if it even starts at all, simply because neither ministers nor officials have the time, or the appetite to wade through everything on its way to Edinburgh. And even if they did, the outrage that would come back on them when important information reaches Scottish Ministers and officials late, would destroy any vestage of credibility which they might seek to salvage from this week.

The difference we have seen over the past week is that while Jack McConnell's Executive would simply have gone along with the exaggerated spin about funds available form the CSR and kept quiet about the 'now you see it, now you don't' foot and mouth compensation, the SNP government has no such qualms. Those informal, internal Labour networks which allowed information to be shared and conflicts 'resolved' are now no longer there. Good - on the evidence of the last few months, it seems that their only purpose was to keep everyone thinking that Scottish interests were being served well, even (and especially) when they were not.

That's a huge step forward in my view, and one which only goes to show 1) how timid the previous government was in its dealings with Westminster departments 2) the subordinate nature of the relationship and 3) the need for more formalised lines of communication if devolved government is to work as well as it can. On reflection, a collective chant to Alasdair Darling, Des Browne and Hilary Benn to "Sit down, and behave yourselves" might actually be a bit too mild. How about "Same old Labour, always cheating" instead?

P.S. Wendy Alexander's been very quiet this week, don't you think?

Trouble At T'Mill

I posted earlier in the week about the respective performances on Thursday of Wendy Alexander and Menzies Campbell, where I was fairly kind about Wendy and pretty scathing about Campbell. For the sake of a snappy headline, though, I suggested that this might have been Campbell's last outing as Lib Dem leader, something which seems to have raised at least one set of eyebrows - in retrospect, quite rightly as well.

My reaction to Campbell's speech has been pretty much at odds with the rest of the world, which was either rabidly favourable (most Lib Dems); gave the benefit of the doubt (the MSM); or completely ignored it (everyone else) - but such is life. Of course, the Lib Dems would never be so daft as to ditch a leader when everyone suspects an election only weeks or months away. However, there is still dissent there. I still reckon that if we do have an autumn or spring election, providing either Chris Hune or Nick Clegg holds their seat and is in a position to challenge, we've almost certainly seen Campbell deliver his last conference speech as Lib Dem leader.

One thing which I didn't forsee was the hebdomas horribilus which was about to befall Wendy Alexander. In common with some others, I actually thought her delivery at FMQs was OK, even if the topic she chose and the 'facts' behind it were somewhat off-beam. I even resisted the temptation to intrude on private grief when the ludicrous George Foulkes slated her newly appointed Head of Communications, Brian Lironi, as "an idiot", and said of former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish that he was a "strange guy" who should "shut up".

But then, I really didn't need to, since there are plenty others around to do that. According to a 'senior Labour source' in today's Sunday Mirror: "Foulkes is a self-important buffoon fast becoming a liability in Scotland", who "seems to think he is licensed to shoot his mouth off at every opportunity regardless of consequences".

"He could be got rid of without a by-election and it could be portrayed as him having to go back to London because of his terror work in Lords. But the reality would be that the party wanted rid of him quick."

Now, Henry Mcleish can look after himself, but Wendy had a duty to slap Foulkes down for his attack on a party employee. She ducked that responsibility, and Lironi has apparently gone off sick. For what it's worth, I've been a party official myself, which is why I sympathise. If someone attacks you, professional etiquette demands that you maintain a diplomatic silence and rely on others to stand up for you - if that doesn't happen, then you might as well pack your bags, which according to the Sunday Herald's Paul Hutcheon and Scotland on Sunday's Eddie Barnes, he plans to do this week, after just two months in post.

But the problems don't end there. According to the same Sunday Herald piece, Labour MSPs are now complaining that she is shutting herself away with a wee clique of advisers. One Labour MSP commented: "Wendy's had a disastrous first week in charge. The party's more split than I can remember, while another weighed in with "Wendy said she'd changed. She said motherhood and marriage had made her a more sympathetic person. That's bollocks."

That sort of discontent and bile usually takes months, if not years to build up. Much was made about the inability of the left to mount a challenge to her, but in an economically, politically and socially conservative movement like the Labour Party, that really shouldn't have been a surprise. Never mind the standard posturing that emanates from the 'Campaign for Socialism' every so often - my suspicion is that these dissenting voices come from the moderate mainstream of Labour - the constituency which was supposed to be happiest with Wendy's elevation.

As I said, I've been wrong a couple of times this week. However, if I'm right and these dissatisfied voices are those in the mainstream who lacked the courage to mount a challenge when they had the chance, wouldn't that represent the most most dangerous political cocktail of the lot?

A First, And Perhaps A Last Outing As Leader

Some thoughts on Wendy Alexander's first appearance at FMQ's:

Not a bad performance, even though it was somewhat scripted and she was clearly a little nervous. Concentrating on abstruse points of detail is fine in small doses, but in devoting all her questions to the government central heating programme, she needed to explain why it was so wrong for the new government to be trying to 'improve' the scheme.

That she failed to do, and while her final 'zinger' about spending money on rebranding the Executive as a Government(£100k) and the funds for a broadcasting commission (£500k) was passable, it was still a bit of a damp squib. Contrary to expectations, the First Minister was restrained throughout. It looks like if there's going to be sharp exchanges, they're going to be initiated by Wendy. Alex can do emollience when it's called for - the question is, can Wendy?

Some thoughts on Menzies Campbell's speech to the Lib Dems:

This is dreadful. Utterly unconvincing, he resorted to shaking at one point to try and convey passion. Every joke greeted with nervous laughter, the silky advocate reduced to cringeworthy rhetoric about fighting - it's excruciating to watch.

"I want to be a voice for the disposessed, the marginalised, those whose voices aren't heard". You're addressing them, Menzies, you're addressing them. And the classic: "It doesn't have to be like this". Indeed not - but isn't that what your detractors have been saying for months?

Oh, he's finished. I only noticed because Andrew Neil took the microphone. Piss-poor perorations R us, anyone?

Well Oiled

I've been rattling around the North East for the last few days, attending SNP meetings in pursuit of a constituency to fight. With the deadline for selecting candidates now less than a fortnight away, it's left SNP members with much less time than they could otherwise have expected to make their choice. With that in mind, I've taken the risk of putting myself about so that people can see what, for good or ill, they might be getting if they vote for me :-)

So far, the itinerary has seen me in Banff, Portsoy and at a BBQ south of Fraserburgh, not far from where my grandparents have their farm. Today, since I had some time on my hands, I made a visit to Bruce Miller in Aberdeen. If you're into books, CDs, DVDs, great big TVs, drinking coffee and ogling musical instruments (guilty on all counts, m'lud), this must be the about the closest thing in the world to music/gadget heaven.

I'm pretty lucky to be in a hotel tonight, since just about everywhere is booked up for the Offshore Europe event in Aberdeen. It hit the headlines today with Scotland Office Minister of State, David Cairns, launching a pre-emptive strike on the SNP's plans to open up discussions on the transfer of North Sea Oil to the jurisdiction of the Scottish Parliament.

"The interests of both Scotland and the UK are best served through continued economic union and the benefits which accompany a UK-wide approach", says Cairns. "Our thinking on this issue is therefore unequivocal - introducing needless uncertainty into an £11bn industry which supports half a million jobs is not an option for the UK Government."

That's us telt, then. Well, except it's not. Stability seems to be at a premium in an industry which seems to have a new minister appointed every year, and which is the first to be raided for supplementary taxes every time Gordon Brown's forecasts are out. And as a spokesperson for the First Minister put it in today's Press and Journal, he's "not going to be put off by the knee-jerk negativity of the junior minister from the Scotland Office" with "nothing new" to say about Government policy for which he has no responsibility.

8... 9... 10... ding ding! In fairness to David Cairns, though, putting up a former priest against a former oil economist on the subject of, er, oil economics, was always going to make for a mismatched contest. But with his maladroit intervention, Cairns has perhaps unwittingly blown the gaff on at least one aspect of Wendy Alexander's mission to 'reconnect' with voters.

As part of her bid to dispel Labour's image of rampant negativity, Ms Alexander has said she wants to "strengthen the financial accountability" of politicians, indicating in the process that she supports the transfer of new financial powers to the Scottish Parliament. So far, so good. But given the large role played by North Sea Revenues in Scotland's economy (£11bn this year alone), how exactly can you have any kind of meaningful fiscal autonomy, unless you also repatriate the revenues and relevant tax powers to Edinburgh?

So, who's got the upper hand in Labour on this one? Wendy, or Westminster? Or is it all just a big scam by Wendy, who after an appropriate period of time will announce that after some suitably weighty consideration, fiscal autonomy is just a distraction from the 'real issues' that those much fabled 'people on the doorstep' will have been telling her all about?

Maybe I've got it all wrong, and she is genuine about this. Somehow I doubt it, but if so, perhaps she just needs to stand, not so much on a doorstep as on a few well connected feet, if she's to stand a chance of getting her Westminster colleagues to pay attention.

Wendy Wind Blows

So, as Labour welcomes its fourth Holyrood leader, we bid farewell to Jack and extend a warm welcome to Wendy. There's no doubt that she will present a different set of challenges to the SNP than did her predecessor. However, with the SNP now setting the agenda from the Holyrood Ministerial Tower, it's also the case that she and her MSP colleagues have some new and awkward terrain of their own to negotiate.

This is the first time Labour has been in opposition to anyone other than the Conservatives in Scotland. There's a new dynamic of a Scottish government at work, which doesn't take its lead from London. Consequently, the old Labour trick of playing the Scottish card just isn't going to work any more – after all, as the advert asks, why have cotton when you can have silk?

A psychological rubicon has been crossed. The SNP is in power, and as I've remarked before, no-one has sold their first born son into slavery, the plagues of boils and locusts have yet to arrive, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse seem curiously absent from the horizon. Even the SNP's sternest doubters have been forced to admit that in government, the party has shown a maturity and sure-footedness with which few would have credited it previously.

In her post-coronation pronouncements, Alexander was quick to spell out to anyone who might have missed it that the SNP had won the election, not by some fluke, but by embracing an agenda of hope and aspiration. To that end, she set out 4 broad headings where she wanted Labour to change: developing Scottish solutions for Scottish aspirations; empowering people and communities rather than institutions; having consumer not producer-focused public services; and delivering a competitive yet compassionate economy.

In our post-ideological age there's probably not much there from which anyone would demur. Labour can lay claim to all the intellectual conceits it wishes, but for many Scots, if there was a stifling political 'consensus', Labour and its patronage networks were the problem. Labour became a byword for a proprietorial, top-down, boring, managerial and oft-times not even particularly competent style of government. As such, the ability of the party to overcome its own hard-wired producer interest is at best highly dubious.

Nevertheless, its a patronage network to which Alexander owes much herself. Hers was a gilded path, with her links to Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown predestining her for a place amongst the elect. All good for her, but it does mean that she missed out on developing some of the more fundamental skills needed by a politician. After all, why waste energy on anything so vulgar as winning people over with persuasion and skill in debate, when you can bludgeon them instead with repeated assertion before letting the party machine do the rest?

As part of the Labour ascendancy, she has formidable support amongst the Scottish chattering classes. Marriage and motherhood have mellowed her, they tell us. Well, perhaps, but the memory lingers of her undermining Henry McLeish, bringing government to a shuddering halt in protest at his attempts to hand her responsibility for Scottish Water as part of her ministerial brief. And who could forget her ludicrous 'Hungry Caterpillar' speech, as John Swinney took on a similar sized portfolio without breaking so much as a bead of perspiration?

It's a series of similar vignettes that have built up the perception of her being somewhat other worldly and near-impossible to work with. This perception is itself put down to her apparently 'formidable' intellect and the inherent misogyny of Scottish society. Again, perhaps. It still doesn't explain how Susan Deacon, who wears her postgraduate learning rather more lightly than does Alexander, managed to be infinitely more effective in office yet never attracted either the same opprobrium or gushing praise.

And that in the end is her biggest problem. If she is seen solely as an abrasive mouthpiece for someone else, will she be able to take her Labour colleagues to where she says she wants to go? How can she rebuild a parliamentary group still suffering from its Stalinist purges of the candidate list back in 1998? And will she be able to engage in the 'more powers' debate without reverting to her default pre-election demonisation of independence and the negativity which turned so many voters away from her party?

Alexander really is Labour's last chance to prevent the SNP from establishing itself as a long-term party of government in Scotland. If she fails, and Labour lose power at Westminster, who seriously expects Scotland to hang around in the union? That's how high the stakes are, and that's why we're going to have it rammed down our throats by Labour supporters in the press and civic society, whether its true or not, that Wendy is the best thing to happen to Scotland since, well, the SNP government.

Unionism might appear to be in disarray right now, but as any hunter knows, the beast is at its most dangerous when wounded and cornered. We've no reason to not be confident at the way matters are progressing, but we should never forget that Alexander has some very powerful allies and is likely to work much more closely with her colleagues in London than did Jack McConnell. For that reason, the SNP would be wise to watch her and hers very carefully as Labour begins to pick itself up from the canvass.

Strange Morning

I found out this morning that I've mislaid my weekly travelcard somewhere. Not in itself a huge problem, but a bit of a nuisance when you only discover this at the London Bridge ticket barrier. Many thanks to the kind revenue protection officer who advised me of the usual fine, but decided to let me through regardless.

Anyway, the morning has just got even stranger. Browsing through the papers, I've found an article by Tim 'nae' Luckhurst - an unlamented former editor of The Scotsman, who now churns out base, boilerplate criticisms of Scotland and the Scots more generally for the madder fringes of the English press. This time, his target is Scottish Labour leader presumptive Wendy Alexander and to my surprise, despite being intended as a 'polemic', I actually agree with most of what he says.

In the meantime, congratulations to Ms Alexander on her elevation. I dare say I'll blog a bit more on her and her party over the next day or so once my own thoughts are a bit clearer, but for the moment, I'll leave you to Mr Luckhurst and his newly found clarity on such matters. Mind you, doesn't even a stopped clock manage to get it right twice a day?

dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot

In today’s debate on the future of government in Scotland, sundry Labour backbenchers started taunting their SNP counterparts. A particular bugbear appeared to be the SNP’s desire to secure 1.5% efficiency savings in each year of government, which prompted growls of ‘how many wurkurz ur yez gonny sack?’, and ‘whit services ur yez gonny cut?’.

Their faces were a picture when Wendy Alexander, responding for Labour, instead chose to criticise the SNP target of 1.5% for not being as ambitious as the 3% savings targets set by the government in Westminster.

Has ever a leadership campaign sunk so catastrophically before even leaving the harbour?

Glug, glug, glug…

Wendy 'Ready To Run'

From Scotland on Sunday:

Another leading candidate for the post, should McConnell quit, is new shadow justice secretary Margaret Curran. Speculation is growing within the Labour Party that the two may sign up to a 'joint ticket'.

Both, however, are understood to want to dampen down speculation they will challenge McConnell. A source close to [Wendy] Alexander added: "The person who makes the wrong move at the wrong time will come unstuck, because they will come across as disloyal."

Whoops... that'll be no marks for courage or for loyalty, then.