Welcome To Red Morningside: #Jockapocalypse, Misogyny and The last Unionista

Oh what an election – its aye been that we take the high road and voters down south vote for the lowest of the low.  But it hasny aye been that there are only 3 Unionistas left in Scotland.

Simple analysis – two parties won with very different visions of the future and one party lost using a tombstone and black and white clips to convey their message.

Watching the results Thursday night through Friday morning with my daughter was fun.  Just when you thought a 27% swing was a new high then a 35% and 39% came along.  What a heady cocktail of change.

Our favourite moment was when the arrow on the swingometer covered over the 39%.  The TV host struggled to read what the swing was as we and I suspect the whole of Scotland, shouted 39% percent repeatedly and incredulously at the TV.

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Our favourite moment was when the arrow on the swingometer covered over the 39%.  The TV host struggled to read what the swing was as we and I suspect the whole of Scotland, shouted 39% percent repeatedly and incredulously at the TV.

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What joy to see the results come in time after, time after, time.  Until, our constituency came up. Edinburgh South.  Such a Scottish moment – we can never quite allow ourselves to experience total exhilaration.  It’s a sort of, ‘dinnae get too carried away wi yir sel’s moment.’

Yes, we knew a total wipe out of ‘better together’ candidates wasn’t going to happen because of the grumpy brothers Mundell and Carmichael but we had hoped Labour were complete toast.

It was too good to be true and Paco McSheepie AKA Neil Hay SNP candidate had his wings clipped by Labour’s last Unionista who was guarding Labour’s smallest majority in Scotland.

Ian Murray was most likely kept in by strong help from Hearts fans after he supported the club through difficult times.  Similarly, his self-publicity materials down played his Labour links and made claims for him being a good local MP.

Ian Murray also had to throw Labour support for Trident under the bus to win – the main stream media seem not to have made a lot out of this.  Pause for a moment – the anti-trident guy in the Labour party won.  The media say Labour are too left-wing to win down south.  Yet, in Scotland – left wing removal of trident wins – even in Anglicised Morningside!

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Ian Murray also had to throw Labour support for Trident under the bus to win – the MSM seem not to have made a lot out of this.  Pause for a moment – the anti-trident guy in the Labour party won.  The media say Labour are too left-wing to win down south.  Yet, in Scotland – left wing removal of trident wins – even in Anglicised Morningside!

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Despite increasing the SNP vote by 26% and coming from 4^th place at the previous 2010 election, Paco, a decent sort of a guy who should have known better than to provoke the ire of Morningside ladies,  lost out by 5.3% of the vote.

In addition to local support for Ian Murray.  Neil Hay was given a torrid time by the press for posting a historical tweet that appeared to be anti-elderly. And this naïve indiscretion probably stopped Labour voters moving to him in the same numbers as in other constituencies.

Local twitteratti in the west of the constituency jest that they now live in, ‘Red Morningside’.  Sadly, there are more ships launched in the constituency at Blackford pond than on the Clyde so this seems a very fitting obituary for an old party that has lost its way.

Ian Murray’s result came around the time that Labour in England would have been realising that all the Liberal seats in the south were going blue.

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Local twitteratti in the west of the constituency jest that they now live in, ‘Red Morningside’.  Sadly, there are more ships launched in the constituency at Blackford pond than on the Clyde so this seems a very fitting obituary for an old party that has lost its way.

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Elections in Scotland have always been thus – we wipe out the bad guys – the bad guys get in down south at Westminster and Labour blame the Scottish people.  But, think on this if we had voted Yes in 2014 we wouldn’t be in this position now.

Scottish Labour accuser in chief – Jackie Baillie MSP – was quick to blame Scots for the decisions of voters in England.  Her position is ridiculous, Scottish Labour’s support of the Tories in ‘Better Together’ is the reason we find our selves now with a Tory Westminster regime.

Blaming people in Scotland isn’t what someone with a social justice perspective should do.  Social justice is about understanding people’s positive reasons for being.  Social justice is not about blame it’s about understanding.  This is the message that the nasty side of Scottish Labour are currently incapable of getting.

When Jackie Baillie argues that the English media, Boris Johnstone and David Cameron banging on about #jockapocalypse won it – she doesn’t behave in a socially just way.  She acts as a person who likes to point the finger at others rather than reflect on her own limitations.

A more consistent and positive position would involve Jackie Baillie repeating her mantras from the referendum and trying to explain to Scots why we are still, ‘Better Together’ even with a Tory government rather than independence- a hard ask I know.

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When Jackie Baillie says the English media, Boris Johnson and David Cameron banging on about #jockapocalypse won it – she doesn’t behave in a socially just way.  She acts as a person who likes to point the finger at others rather than reflect on her own limitations.

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The result in England was not Scotland’s fault.  Labour’s vote increased slightly, what killed Labour was that in the south Liberal voters went to the Tories.

I listened to a Sky programme that spoke to liberals that had voted Tory. Not one person mentioned the SNP – they mentioned Liberal lies on tuition fees, a lack of trust and Tory improvements on the economy.  Outside ex-mining areas and London – Labour are not trusted on the economy.

What won it was, ‘The economy – stupid’.  The only Tory ‘future’ based message of the election was the economy gets better with the Tories.  In the areas of England where Labour had the chance to win marginal seats, their lack of a ‘future’ message cost them those seats.

Rather than a vision for the future, Labour unambitiously provided a chiselled list of tightly costed Tory Light policies. As Nicola Sturgeon pointed out, Milliband lacked the courage of his own convictions.

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Rather than a vision for the future, Labour unambitiously provided a chiselled list of tightly costed Tory Light policies. As Nicola Sturgeon pointed out Milliband lacked the courage of his own convictions.

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In her own Social Justice way, Sturgeon seemed to have had more belief in Milliband than he had in himself.  The audiences for the debates picked up on this – even in England they found they could vote for someone who believed in others.

PR, green policies, ideas for local economies and a shift towards a high-paid manufacturing economy would have won over Liberal voters.  The SNP and the Greens in Scotland provided exactly such vision of an alternative, socially just, Nordic type future.  That vision built trust with voters and was compelling.

That future vision will always trump Labour’s approach of harking back to a collective past that is extremely male in its memory.  Remember patronising Lady – those guys almost lost the referendum from a 75% lead.  Remember the male arrogant headline, ‘Jim Murphy has been “astonished” by how easy he’s found it to take on the SNP’.

Which great strategist thought that one up? From a social justice perspective, this headline is offensive.  It leaves you wondering, were there any women in the meeting where they decided to attack Nicola on the basis that she wasn’t as clever as that smart bloke Jim?

Irony of irony, Labour were not very smart at calling out the SNP and Nicola for being stupid.  They followed this up with the, ‘Wee lassie in the tin Hat’ line and all Scottish Labour feminists had once again to sit on their hands and grin and bear it.

Scotland has a number of key social justice issues in its DNA – you can read them in the myths and irreverent jokes about the country.  The guy who thought up the headline that sought to shout out that Jim Murphy was running rings round that ‘silly’ woman (Nicola Sturgeon), did not understand Scotland’s dislike of the ‘smart aerse’.

Labour strategists have consistently employed negative campaigning techniques that appear to come from the, ‘Playbook of Out dated misogyny’.  In so doing they have offended Scottish sensibility and reaped the whirlwind that they sowed themselves.