The last squawk

Oh furgodssake. I was planning an evening putting my feet up, scoffing at the debates on the telly like a normal person, and then having an early night with a box set of Battlestar Galactica and a meringue, and Ed Miliband only goes and spoils it all by putting the final nail in Jim Murphy’s coffin. So I have to write something, and there’s me been resisting temptation all day.

So, deep in the rain forests of South America, linguists discovered a parrot that was the last speaker of a language whose human users had long since died out. All that’s known of this language are a few words squawked by a parrot which has no idea what they mean. And that’s also a fair description of socialism and the Labour party in Scotland. But parrots at least can have bright red plumage, there’s nothing red left about Labour.

It hasn’t been easy resisting the temptation to blog something. Labour is the satirical gift that keeps on giving. First off there was David Blunkett complaining that the biggest threat to democracy was that people in Scotland aren’t listening to Labour any more, and not you know, that Labour should maybe be listening to Scottish people. In Blunkettworld it’s the job of the electorate to listen to political parties. If he believes that then it explains a whole lot about Labour’s behaviour when in office, and illustrates perfectly why Labour needs to be held to account by a big bloc of SNP MPs standing over them with a voting lobby baseball bat.

Then Jim Murphy had a car crash of an interview on Reporting Scotland with Sally Magnusson. In the normal scheme of things a Labour politician getting a rough ride on Reporting Scotland is like the princess complaining that there’s a pea under her pile of mattresses. However Jim’s been lying in Labour’s pee for so long that even Reporting Scotland can no longer ignore the stench. Jim spent the entire interview not answering any of the questions Sally put to him, preferring instead to squawk about Davie Cameron rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of Scotland voting for a party that hates him even more than Labour does. This may make sense in Jim’s universe, but it doesn’t in anyone else’s. Sally didn’t give him a cracker, and a few more undecided voters decided that they weren’t going to vote for Jim’s bonhomie of the bonfire, smugging while Labour burns.

So there was that, and then came the leader interviews on Question Time when Davie, Nick and Ed faced questions from punters. All of them were keen to let us know that they hold no truck with any deals with the SNP because the SNP are communist nazi feminist misogynists who want to break up this great country of ours. Now there are some languages, some of which may be spoken by parrots in the Amazon, which have more than one word for “our”. There’s the our in the sense of “belonging you me, you, and others”, and there’s the our in the sense of “belonging to me and others but not you”. UK politicians demonstrate a new sense of the word our in the phrase “this great country of ours”, and that would be “belonging to me and others but not Scottish people”. Because they’re all quite determined that Scottish voters will get no say in how it’s governed.

Just when you thought that Labour in Scotland was already closer to an extinction event and deeper in the doo doo than a paralytic parrot with dysentry, Ed Miliband went and made it worse. No really, it was possible to do that and Ed did. Hell yeah. He tied the Murphmacaw up in a sack full of bricks and tossed him in the Union Canal. Then he jumped up and down on top of the sack to make sure that it sank to the bottom, getting himself half drowned in the process.

Ed said that he would prefer that there was a Tory government than do any sort of deal with the SNP. All over Scotland people were saying – did he say what I thought he said? Eh? Did that actually happen there? Noooo. Here put that telly on rewind and let me hear that bit again. Well in the name of the wee man. He did so. He did so say that. The last remnants of Labour support shrivelled and died from shame and embarrassment and the twitter trolls retreated under their bridge just as the bridge collapsed. Labour’s last supporters fell silent and you could hear a feather drip canal watter. Vote Labour or Ed and the Labour party will make damn sure you get the Tories to punish you for daring to think for yourself. And you thought extorsion was illegal.

He did try to backtrack a bit, and if you looked at the fine print he hadn’t actually ruled out anything much. The SNP have already ruled out a coalition, Ed has now ruled out a confidence and supply deal. So we are left with the possiblity of a minority government where Labour has to try and pass more than gall stones, and it can only do that by not pissing off other parties whose support it’s going to need. So not off to a good start then. Labour doesn’t know how to share.

But there was no doubt about the sentiment – one shared by all three party leaders – Scotland isn’t welcome in the Union if it doesn’t behave itself and vote the way Westminster wants. So there you have it. Remember all that guff last year about families of nations and Scotland punching above its weight and being valued and loved? Remember Ed telling us that if he was Prime Minister he’d give Scotland home rule? Ed Miliband is still more afraid of the Tory press than he is of five million pissed off Scottish people. It’s up to us now to show him who he really needs to be scared of.

The Union is a dead parrot, and it’s blue.

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