4 Comments

Good piece Blair. The fact that nearly all of our comics and satirists see SNP as off limits is an issue too. They wrongly see any attack on SNP is a de-facto endorsement of the Tories and they have an emotional investment with SNP - who have become like a football team or pop act they love not a political party - replete with flaws like all others. Reality is SNP & Tories are two (yes in may way politically) different peas in the same flag waving pod. Labour's Jackie Bailie is expert at using comedy and rigour to keep them on point and Anas too. Leonard's refusal to deploy either humour OR anger(which to it's own base works we'll for the Tories) in confronting them is a big concern. 97% approval for Nicola Sturgeon from her own party is a punchline to a joke I am sure of that. Ed

PS Can we take issue please with Green Party who really are now the Yellow Party (both politically and in purpose) - their failure to join all the other opposition parties on extending the Salmond inquiry is disgracefully spineless.

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Pro-UK groups have been ridiculing them for years. UKUV regularly ridicules nationalism

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I'm no politician and no doubt frequently get the wrong words out but this - "highlights the nationalist lack of self-awareness" never fails to astound me. A politician and someone as intelligent as Joanna Cherry can't see the irony here? I guess it proves your point but it also highlights another nationalist failing, in that everything is binary, their way is right, their opponents way is wrong. They are killing debate which kills progress.

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“When people criticise my party, it feels like a personal insult”.

When I was a Labour Party supporter (which was most of my life until 2013) I also felt a sense of unfairness when Labour was criticised which felt personal. It was personally difficult to accept successive Conservative election victories throughout the 80s. I was personally proud to identify and support Labour initiatives like ‘red wedge’, myself and my parents personally invested in Labour Party activism and energy canvassing and campaigning for Labour parliamentarians in our patch in the east end of Glasgow. We were personally overjoyed with Tony Blair’s Labour victory in 1997 and took great pride in our own contribution to a Labour win after the cold Conservative era.

All activism is personal and comes from a person’s political marrow. We all need more humour and humanity in our politics but personal emotion is what energises folk to go out canvassing and campaigning on cold dark winter nights. That personal hard core gut feeling is the collective energy which carries elected representatives over the line as MPs, MSPs or councillors. It’s not a quality that’s exclusive to one party - it’s a cross cutting energy and in truth all political parties would love to distil the essence of it. Sometime around 2013 I took my personal energy for Scottish politics away from Labour and offered it to another party and I’ve never regretted it though I do have fond memories of my involvement in Labour to look back in. Personal memories of an older time in Scottish politics. Never forgetting that the personal is always political even when personal politics changes.

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