Still The Tartan Tories?

#BothVotesSNP, reads the hashtag.

But the SNP is going to clean up in the constituencies. Qualifying it for few, if any, list seats. Casting a list vote for the SNP would effectively be voting for the Conservative Party.

Perhaps that is what the #BothVotesSNP tweeters want?

The large Scottish Conservative vote until very recent years, if somewhat obscured by First Past The Post, must have gone somewhere.

And the SNP's supporters are so viscerally anti-Labour that they would vote Conservative if the SNP were either not there or not electorally credible.

On Thursday, it seems that, for all practical purposes, many of them intend to do precisely that.

Anyone with no such desire ought to give their list vote to Labour.

As Proud As They Ought To Be

I hope that the Greens are exactly as proud as they ought to be, of not having endorsed a second preference vote for Sadiq Khan.

For all his faults, Khan is not Nasty Zac Goldsmith, the second mega-rich, not-quite-a-pukka-toff race-baiter in succession to be the Conservative Party's candidate for Mayor of London.

But then, the killer question to the Greens is always, "Do you regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?" Only a one-word answer is acceptable, or even possible.

They may agree with us from time to time. But they are not us.

UKIP opposed the Iraq War, and I am very glad that it did. But is UKIP part of the Left?

UKIP's opposition to the Iraq War was and is one up on Nasty Nick Cohen, whose last known affiliation was to a piece of media fluff called the Women's Equality Party.

That party has been designed to promote the career of Sandi Toksvig, and it has therefore been heavily promoted by Radio Four. It, too, has failed to endorse a second preference vote for Khan.

Moreover, it, too, might reasonably be asked whether it thought that the wrong side lost the Miners' Strike, both in itself and as an example of the economic, social, cultural and political changes of the 1980s.

Cohen's candidate is on course to be beaten by George Galloway, with whom he is obsessed.

Galloway has endorsed a second preference vote for Khan. At around 48 per cent of first preferences, Khan is therefore going to owe his eventual victory to Galloway.

Galloway is also well into campaigning for the Tooting by-election that Khan's election as Mayor will cause to be held.

If Nasty Nick Cohen did not also contest that by-election, then even his little remaining claim to be taken seriously will have been destroyed.

All that, and the first ever parliamentary candidate for the Women's Equality Party will have been a man.

Her Dirty War On The North

A comment of a previous post (although not, I have to say, about it) states:

Wait for the police to issue one of their statements that someone would have been charged if still alive. They won't dare not in Thatcher's case but I have never heard of it happening in two different cases for the same person. It will this time, Thatcher for the Orgreave conspiracy and Thatcher for the Hillsborough conspiracy. She is finished as a credible historical figure, her own party is no longer trying to defend her dirty war on the North.

Quite.

And that last turn of phrase, bracketing her with Galtieri, is particularly good. I am going to nick that one.

Passing Over

There has been a total of 11 complaints of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. 

In a party with nigh on half a million members, that is statistically negligible.

Both the aristocratic and the lower-middle-class wings of the other party would be far worse.

Anyway, this story seems to be going away, as things from the previous week do on Mondays.

Really Spoiling Us?

"The Ambassador thinks there's a problem," Andrew Marr told Diane Abbott. As if that settled anything, so to speak.

Whose Ambassador?

Perhaps we should count our blessings that Mark Regev is still called that, rather than "the Governor-General", or "the Proconsul", or "the Viceroy".

Although any of those would be honest.

I am all for a vote to Leave at the EU referendum. But when do we get a referendum to Leave Israel?

And to Leave Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf tyrannies, whose hostility to Jews is without parallel?

Tuppence

Everyone is very annoyed that Ken Livingstone has used a rape analogy.

But no one cares tuppence that Nick Cohen has done so.

This Stumbling, Squawking Carnival

Peter Hitchens writes:

I was just leaving the BBC’s Westminster studios on Thursday when Mr Livingstone stepped into an over-excited knot of political reporters.

They looked like what they are – simultaneously a pack of snapping wolves, buzzing with self-righteousness, and a flock of bleating, conformist sheep, all thinking and saying exactly the same thing.

After undergoing a minute or two of synthetic rage and baying, the former Mayor of London politely excused himself and went to the lavatory.

The flock waited outside, restored for a moment to calm and reason.

Then Ken popped out again and the wild shouting and pushing resumed, as if a switch had been pressed.

At one point this stumbling, squawking carnival was joined by a barking dog. 

If it had gone on much longer, crowds of tourists would have gathered, mistaking it for an ancient London tradition.

This is how politics is reported in this country, almost completely without thought.