News from the place to the north of the North

Jezza came to Scotland this week, and vowed to restore his moribund party’s fortunes with some dour activities. Labour’s going to counter the joyful positivity of Scotland’s Yes campaign by being miserable, although Johann Lamont already tried that and it didn’t do her much good. Cheery and Johann are two concepts which are usually only found in the same sentence if there’s also a negative in there too, like that one. It’s not clear what Jezza meant by the phrase dour activities, perhaps he thought it sounded couthy and Scottish, but it has been Labour’s propensity for dour activities like wasp chewing and having Gaunie No Dae That Jist Gaunie No as its catch phrase that got it into its current mess in the first place. Perhaps Jezza thinks that the party can be revived with a pep talk from the Rev IM Jolly. People will really flock back home to Labour if they think it’s just like a meeting of the Wee Frees on a wet Wednesday in Wester Ross. Labour, sucking the joy out of politics since forever while hoping no one notices that Jezza’s New Politics are looking suspiciously like the old politics. He’s only been leader a couple of weeks and he’s already demonstrated that his political motor is a bit of a VW diesel.

While Jezza was being miserable in Edinburgh, possibly on account of the fact that he’d just discovered he’ll have had his tea, the Herald newspaper revealed that Labour’s MPs have been instructed to stop mentioning Scotland entirely. Scotland now takes its place on the rapidly lengthening list of things that Labour doesn’t want to mention, like Trident renewal, student fees, Gordie Broon’s Vow, where Mike Arsonist Watson keeps his matches, and Alistair Darling’s expenses claims. Labour has decided that Scotland is so upsetting that it’s better just not to mention us at all. It’s the North British way, which isn’t nationalist at all.

Despite the fact that Labour swear blind that the northern accounting unit which they call Scottish Labour really is a properly autonomous political party, it’s not actually the autonomous party of anywhere, at least not anywhere that Labour wants to admit is a real country. The Labour hierarchy in a place that isn’t England claims that mentioning Scotland plays into the Nationalists’ agenda, because using the name Scotland is acknowledging the fact that Scotland is actually a country and that makes people wonder why Scotland can’t govern itself. It’s promoting separatism to acknowledge the fact that Scotland and England are separate countries.

In fact, what really makes people wonder why Scotland can’t govern itself is the fact that British Unionist parties like Labour keep coming out with such hauf-airsed policies. It’s possibly the first time in recorded history that a political party has attempted to use sheer stupidity to patronise the electorate. Labour wants to change the language and erase over 1000 years of Scottish existence, and is arrogant and stupid enough to believe that its Westminster MPs are influential enough to achieve that goal by simply not mentioning the name Scotland. Deep down in what passes for the party’s soul, there lurks the belief that if you say Scotland three times while turning widdershins, Alicsammin will appear and cast an evil spell on you.

In keeping with the party’s aim of fostering solidarity within the UK, Scottish Labour will now be known as Transgeordie Labour. As a result of the new policy of linguistic engineering, which isn’t a Scottish policy because there is no Scotland to have Scottish policies for, Ian Murray’s job title has been changed to the Shadow Secretary of State for Greater Red Morningside and the party’s justice spokesperson has taken to referring to the Met Polis HQ as That Place To The North Of The North Yard, whereas the BBC will now call it the place where you are – although to be honest that’s what they’ve called us for years now – and Reporting Scotland will have its name changed to Reporting Labour.

The attempt to claim to be the most patriotically Scottish party hasn’t lasted long. Labour are still reeling from the drubbing they got at the polls after Jim Scottish Irn Bru Murphy for Scotland tried to tout the Scottish Labour Scottish Party for Scotland We’re Really Dead Scottish Honest Party. Sadly the voters decided that they were just dead and not honest at all. As a result we now have a rare example of modern politicians adopting the oldest funeral ritual in the world, not speaking the name of the recently deceased. It’s a form of magic, don’t say the name and you will be immune to the evil spirit of Nicola Sturgeon stealing all your expenses claims.

A refusal to mention the name of the recently deceased or things which upset you is a taboo which is widespread amongst traditional cultures, although it’s unlikely to succeed because the rest of us are not going to forget that Scotland is a country just because some Labour MP for the Midlands refuses to utter its name. Whereas traditional peoples adopt the practice as a means of demonstrating respect, Labour is doing it to demonstrate its disrespect. The party would have considerably more success in reviving its fortunes in Scotland if it adopted some other traditional funeral practices from ages long past, like staking out Tony Blair to be pecked at by ravens, or walling Gordie Broon up in a cave – although given the fact that he never appears in public it’s perfectly possible that they’ve already done that.

So Labour wants to restore its fortunes in that place to the north of the North by being miserable and refusing to acknowledge that Scotland exists. This is going to endear Yes voters to the party and make us all flock back home to Labour. Of course, as the famous saying has it, we didn’t leave Labour, Labour left us, and now we’ve got possession of the house we’ve bolted the doors and locked the windaes so that the basterts cannae sneak back in. But it doesn’t look like we need to worry, as it seems that Labour has lost our address.

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