Don't go blaming us

ED DOESN'T GET IT, DOES HE?

In the aftermath of the election results, the euphoria of events in Scotland and despair at events UK wide, there are a lot of people indulging in the blame game. Especially Labour politicians and supporters.  And one common thread seems to be to lay some of the blame for their poor performance on the people of Scotland, where Labour dropped from forty one seats to just one.

I think this is usually referred to as 'denial'.  Some simple arithmetic shows that, even if Labour had won every single seat north of the border, they would still be well short of the Tory total.  And Scotland elected a huge tranche of MPs who would have been happy to support a left leaning Westminster government.  We did our bit.  Even Ed Miliband doesn't appear to want to acknowledge this, when it's clear that if there is fault it lies with him, the Labour party, and the susceptibility of the English electorate to give in to the messages of fear that the right wing media pumps out.

Ed thinks 'nationalism' was responsible for his losses up here.  How delusional can you be?  A simple look at voter turnout figures and the size of the majorities achieved shows that many thousands of Indyref No voters must have put an X against their SNP candidate.  And they haven't all suddenly become converts to Scottish independence.  That was never what this was about.

What people here do want is a change in the way politics is being conducted; an end to the ideological bullshit of austerity and the immense damage it is doing to individual lives; greater devolution of powers to Holyrood, as promised during Indyref; a hope for greater social justice and a reduction in the vast inequalities that distort our society.  Progressive politics.  That's what we voted for here, whilst in England there was .... only the wonderful Caroline Lucas (would Brighton consider becoming a Scottish enclave?).  Leading economists have stated that Nicola Sturgeon's plans for increased spending and growth are far more likely to succeed in the long term than the austerity agenda, and will be better for the majority of people in the immediate period.  We voted for hope and common sense.

Meanwhile England has voted for more of the same - greed, ideological attacks on the welfare state and an increase in inequality.  Fear has been allowed to triumph over hope.  Why else would anyone possibly vote for a party that included such vile incompetents as Osborne, Hunt, Pickles, Gove and Shiny Dave himself?

If you have any doubts that there is now a vast cultural and political difference between  the two countries then consider this.  If the votes cast on Thursday had been allocated seats on a proportional basis then ukip would comfortably be the third largest party in parliament, with the SNP back in fifth.  A party that, as far as I'm aware, couldn't muster enough votes to retain a single deposit in this country.  The far right have no place in Scotland.

There was a 'threat', made up by the Tories, that 'Scotland' could somehow be dominating England (it was never explained exactly how that would work....) the right wing media acted horrified.  But England dominating Scotland, despite having no mandate to do so, is just seen as business as usual.  Funny that.