I dont like your politics, but your tone is refreshing.

Please break down for us how any Corbyn policy, you can pick anyone, is inherently evil.

I'm guessing you meant to word that differently.

What about Blair isn't free market globalist?

lol yes, first use of word 'cover' as in political cover, second use as in 'cover your face'.

Have Labour just given up in Scotland?

It seems amazing to me that given their losses in Scotland, which make them close to mathematically unelectable, that they have not put Scotland at the core of there political strategy and messaging. Instead they seem to be totally ignoring it to the point where the Tories will/have become a bigger party in Scotland.

Tories are already the bigger party and polls are showing some pretty remarkable increases in their possible share of the vote at the upcoming GE, some even have it doubling since 2015. Politics up here are no longer viewed through the traditional left/ right divide, it is now the nationalist/ unionist divide and the tories have positioned themselves as the defenders of the union. Labour have been weaker with their pro union message (not helped by Corbyn going against Scottish labour policy and saying he would allow another Indy referendum). We're in unheard of territory where Labour supporters are defecting to the Tories. It looks as though they could gain some seats while Labour end up losing their sole Scottish MP.

Would Labour win more support being strongly pro Union or pro Indi?

Yes vote down to 40% and now only 26% support Sturgeons referendum demands..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...e-support.html

Daily Mail tho.

Pro union. They have come out in that direction but it's just been a bit wishy-washy at times. They've made the mistake of trying to woo back voters they've lost to the Snp whereas the tories have come out as strongly pro union and are hoovering up voters who have no love for the nationalists.

What makes you think they're ignoring it? Going to take longer than 2 years to reverse a decades long decline. A strong Labour vote depends also on mobilising young people to register and vote which is a massive organisational challenge.

With support evaporating by the day, Queen Nicola has now delayed progressing on her second independence referendum.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politic...lans-1-4429015

Willie Rennie is correct in that article.

A sudden change in tact from Sturgeon trying to say the upcoming election isn't about independence, despite the fact she would clearly use any large majority to continue pushing for it. She's clearly worried about the polls

https://stv.tv/news/politics/1386631...-independence/

Also claims she wants an independent Scotland to be a full memeber of the EU but refuses to say if the SNP manifesto will contain a pledge to apply for EU membership. This is all about trying to be all things to all people, bring in anti=brexit voters while also trying not to scare off pro-brexit voters.

Labour's Gordon Brown was widely credited with saving the Union during the referendum campaign. The result was a SNP whitewash at the next election and a Tory government. It is difficult to see how more of that is going to help Labour.

Widely credited? You may have to look into the truth behind the headlines and find out it's nonsense. I'm off to my pit so I'll let you do your own research on that one for now but I can help out if needed tomorrow.

I cannot see the thoughts in your head.

Meanwhile in nationalist lala land, the usual level of responses are coming when things don't go their way.

The polling continually showed it would be a victory for 'no' and a post referendum study showed Brown's intervention made little or no difference. After the result though a nationalist myth built up that Brown came out, told a lot of lies and the 'Yes' side lost because of this. This allowed them to continue with a narrative that they should've won and it was only the fact that those simple, easily led No voters had been lied to that cost them victory. Far easier to go down that route than face up to the shortfalls of their campaign/ cause and any necessary introspection that may be required.

Thanks for fleshing that out properly.

I should point out I said Brown was "widely credited" with swinging the referendum. That is different from actually doing it. He was in fact widely credited in many newspapers, even tory ones, as cursory googling shows.

Additionally when you say "litte or no difference" you need to clarify that. If he changed the view of 2-3% of the electorate that's a small effect in absolute terms but it makes the difference between yes and no. I could not find any such study, do you have a link?

I agree with your analysis of the SNP's spin but nonetheless, it it difficult to see where Labour can gain votes with its unionism. At the end of the day Labour is not a unionist party: its focus is on worker rights. I doubt it would help the unionist cause much either: it would create the impression of a westminster London elite keeping plucky scots down.

I'll have a look for it later. Iirc it was actually a Canadian company or University that done the study, I could be wrong though.

Re Labour, as the electorate polarises around 2 views it's vital they have a strong stance on which one they are on. I understand what you're saying about them not being a unionist party but imo they should play up the fact that socialism is internationalist and not nationalist and flesh out their message from there. Point out the hypocrisy of SNP views on socialism and how they are basically saying we should care about children in poverty in Oban and pull up the drawbridge and lets not bother about children in poverty in Oldham etc.

Also, they need to stop being so bloody reactive and become proactive instead.

Alistair Darling standing side by side with Osborne and telling the Scots that they couldn't use the pound (which is a UK asset not an English asset) after independence, did far more damage to Labour than Gordon Brown imo.

aaaand once again the only things that seem to gain traction as negative for the tories seem to be the very few things they're doing correctly. Equalising taxes on the self employed and now getting rid of the triple lock for pensions which is a really dumb policy that benefits a lot of already very asset rich pensioners (as well as plenty of poor pensioners but just have a progressive system).

A Westminster committee has recommended that no more ex service men should be charged with offences in NI, includes RUC/UDR and the spooks.

State immunity for their terrorists.

This must be the study I was thinking of. Ailsa Henderson is Canadian.

http://www.scottishreferendumstudy.c...inary-results/

If you check out the video from just after 8:30 onwards it discusses the 'vow' and it's impact. This was from the Brown intervention.

Also, it's probably relevant to post some polls to show that 'No' was already winning



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinio...ferendum,_2014

I've actually had a look a bit more at the study I linked to above and it backs up my earlier comment about the nationalist myth building of the electorate being lied to. Some pretty incredible results in the study for the question below :