Council elections

[sbcmfc]

2 hours ago, slasher said:

A lot of these guys even at local level have wider political ambitions. Plus I think you underestimate the pathological hatred some in Labour have for the SNP. 

Sad, but true ?

Yes, to the point it's school playground stuff.

A shame, as I picked the labour guy 1st as I felt he was doing a good job (or is a good self promoter?) and is a decent bloke.

Its no wonder folk can't be bothered with politics.

[slasher]

A Lab/Con pact likely to be confirmed next week ?

Edited May 12, 2017 by slasher

[Guest flumax]

8 hours ago, slasher said:

A Lab/Con pact likely to be confirmed next week ?

Furryboots? 

[aaid]

16 hours ago, slasher said:

A Lab/Con pact likely to be confirmed next week ?

I can't see that happening anywhere this side of the general election.  Especially as Dugdale has all but ruled them out. 

[slasher]

11 hours ago, flumax said:

Furryboots? 

For control of North Lanarkshire council.

[aaid]

So who's going to blink first, Kezia or Aberdeen Labour?

[ErsatzThistle]

Con/Lab coalition to be announced in Aberdeen too supposedly with Barney Crockett as Provost. A recently elected Lib Dem councillor also quit to be an independent.

[Flure]

5 minutes ago, aaid said:

So who's going to blink first, Kezia or Aberdeen Labour?

Kezia Dugdale has suspended the entire Aberdeen Labour group.

[Flure]

But - what does it mean for North Lanarkshire and North Ayrshire?

[Flure]

Nicola Sturgeon @NicolaSturgeon

 

 

What a total shambles. Suspension doesn't change fact that these councillors have used Labour votes to give Aberdeen a Tory council.

[slasher]

29 minutes ago, Flure said:

But - what does it mean for North Lanarkshire and North Ayrshire?

North Lanarkshire Labour group are backtracking a bit. They're now saying that they hope to form a minority administration. How they hope to do that I've no Idea. They have 32 seats plus the support of 1 independent making 33.....the SNP have 33 seats making it a tie. There's one other independent who up till now insists on abstaining. Unless they change their mind it's a hung council and back to the polls??????

[min]

Labour and Tories have been in coalition for the last few years in Aberdeen, so it's business as usual. I fully expect the suspended councillors to be accepted back into the Labour party after the GE. It's nothing more than a political calculation by Kezia to appear to be a strong leader and increase her profile and appeal across the country.

[Ally Bongo]

2 hours ago, min said:

Labour and Tories have been in coalition for the last few years in Aberdeen, so it's business as usual. I fully expect the suspended councillors to be accepted back into the Labour party after the GE. It's nothing more than a political calculation by Kezia to appear to be a strong leader and increase her profile and appeal across the country.

There have also been SNP/Tory council coalitions but thats not the point

Scottish Labour said before and after these council elections that they would not go into coalition with any party that passes on austerity

The SNP said they would not go into any coalitions with the Tories

Scottish Labour also rejected the specific Aberdeen council Labour/Tory coalition proposal and the cooncillors went ahead and did it anyway

[andymac]

21 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

There have also been SNP/Tory council coalitions but thats not the point

Scottish Labour said before and after these council elections that they would not go into coalition with any party that passes on austerity

The SNP said they would not go into any coalitions with the Tories

Scottish Labour also rejected the specific Aberdeen council Labour/Tory coalition proposal and the cooncillors went ahead and did it anyway

That's representative (as opposed to delegate) democracy for you.

[min]

29 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

There have also been SNP/Tory council coalitions but thats not the point

Scottish Labour said before and after these council elections that they would not go into coalition with any party that passes on austerity

The SNP said they would not go into any coalitions with the Tories

Scottish Labour also rejected the specific Aberdeen council Labour/Tory coalition proposal and the cooncillors went ahead and did it anyway

Why didn't Scottish labour suspend these councillors 6 months ago or a year ago or 4 years ago. It's the same coalition that will enact the same policies ( whether that includes austerity or not)) that has been in power for years, this is merely a continuation.

All I'm saying is that this is obvious political posturing by Dugdale and the councillors will quietly be welcomed back in no time at all.

[Ally Bongo]

27 minutes ago, andymac said:

That's representative (as opposed to delegate) democracy for you.

I'd suggest, in the case of Aberdeen Council, with the SNP having the largest number of councillors, that it's not democracy at all ...

[andymac]

23 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

I'd suggest, in the case of Aberdeen Council, with the SNP having the largest number of councillors, that it's not democracy at all ...

Er no, wards vote in representatives. If these representatives then find an accommodation  with others to command a majority that is democracy. SNP bods act like delegates not representatives, except when they are in a minority and then quite happy to work with the Tories to push a compromise through.

 

[Ally Bongo]

15 minutes ago, andymac said:

 SNP bods act like delegates not representatives, except when they are in a minority and then quite happy to work with the Tories to push a compromise through.

 

This seems to be the same mantra of Unionists all over twitter today

There were no promises of not working with Tories before and after previous elections

There was this time - by both the SNP and Labour

[andymac]

Just now, Ally Bongo said:

This seems to be the same mantra of Unionists all over twitter today

There were no promises of not working with Tories before and after previous elections

There was this time - by both the SNP and Labour

For the hard of thinking....

I do not want to do A but the world is the world and as a REPRESENTATIVE they have to make a choice about what they believe is best. I now as an SNP fanboy this concept is slightly beyond you but the tories, on occasion when they thought it the right thing to do for the majority. have gone against their core beliefs.

[Ally Bongo]

6 minutes ago, andymac said:

For the hard of thinking....

 

That is some spin on today's events 

Conveniently you still seem to be missing the point

What about the proposed coalition being run past Scottish Labour HQ and them saying No ?

Does the 9 councillors being suspended by the party not kinda give you a hint ?

[andymac]

6 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

That is some spin on today's events 

Conveniently you still seem to be missing the point

What about the proposed coalition being run past Scottish Labour HQ and them saying No ?

Does the 9 councillors being suspended by the party not kinda give you a hint ?

No the representatives made a choice, binned, suspended, whatever they made their choice. The representative is key not the party.

[Ally Bongo]

2 minutes ago, andymac said:

No the representatives made a choice, binned, suspended, whatever they made their choice. The representative is key not the party.

The Labour representatives got 17 seats in 2012 and 9 in 2017

These representatives were clearly sent a message by the electorate

SNP got 19, Tories got 11 and Labour got 9

So it's not even a case of them going into coalition with the Tories which Labour said they would not do - It's putting the Tories in power

 

[Ally Bongo]

http://derekbateman.scot/

Something strange has happened in Scotland. A transformation of sorts has overturned completely the accepted basis of our politics. Broadly, it went like this.

Whatever the deep and abiding mutual mistrust between Labour and the SNP, and notwithstanding disagreements over the constitution with the Liberals, nevertheless all three parties had a shared policy platform on the centre left. It was variegated of course according to the times, but when there was a showdown over Scotland’s national interest they grudgingly stood together – as in the 1997 referendum. They jointly adopted a default position that was anti-Tory, mirroring the perceived attitudes of the voters. When it came to the preparation for devolution, the SNP did stand outside the constitutional convention (against Alex Salmond’s wishes, I believe) but only because they wanted to go further, not because they were opposed. All the main parties accepted as an article of faith that the Tories did not represent Scotland, were undemocratic in opposing subsidiarity and self-determination and were political lepers to be avoided for fear of ridicule and contamination.

Yet today, this entire construct has been overturned to the extent that Labour and the Liberals are actively encouraging people to vote Conservative rather than SNP. It seems true that Willie Rennie has instructed Liberal councillors not to form working arrangements with Nationalists, preferring Tories instead. Kezia Dugdale sought an artifice to cover her embarrassment by saying no deals should be struck with parties of austerity – define – yet in Aberdeen today it appears her group is going into coalition with Conservatives whom I presume we all agree tend to favour austerity.

The SNP has become the unwanted cur of politics, loathed by all as if it were an infection. Vote for anybody opposed to another referendum is the cry from them all. At all costs we must not give in to democracy and allow the Scots another vote. Nothing else matters. Vote No to the SNP. Vote in a Tory if necessary. They are better than the Nationalists because they will ensure you are denied another shot at deciding your future. Any future is better than independence. Any future.

Yet that future is almost certain to be anything up to 20 years of hard-right, selfish austerity-driven, anti European Britnat ideology, removing powers from Holyrood, shoe-horning Scottish interests into a Little Britain policy portfolio designed to solve the problems of Brexit. And wherever you look those problems are building. Scotland will be disproportionately hit compared to England. Professor Michael Keating warns that what the Liberals and Labour spent decades building, aided by a generation of campaigners for devolution, is now under clear and present threat.

Why can’t they see where this is heading? What is blinding the parties of devolution to the obvious? The Supreme Court ruling made clear how flimsy is the underlying power of Holyrood. What will constrain an all-powerful Theresa May who can claim some sort of Scottish mandate to add to her towering Westminster majority?

I read commentators whose declared preference is devolution/ federalism gloating at the slippage they perceive in SNP support and delighting in signs that a referendum policy isn’t obviously popular. I get it that this is a ‘story’ and it cuts against the grain of the ever rising SNP but they are adding to an exaggerated sense that we don’t need an SNP power base. Who, I ask, is going to protect Scots from what is coming?

For a short-term anti-SNP gain, they are abandoning a consensus that seeks to ameliorate the excesses of Tory policy. But what happens if those powers are simply removed because Brexit has created a national UK emergency in which all decisions and all fund raising has to be centralised?

There is I think a glib discounting of the generational harm Brexit could do to our country. It’s as if people have stopped thinking beyond four weeks hence, as if, after a massive Tory win, we can regroup and think again. Liberals and Labour are playing the Tories’ game, doing their job for them and turning the election into an anti-SNP crusade.

The Liberals position in Scotland is a betrayal of all those people who worked for federalism and made the constitutional convention work. I knew many of them who were ready to countenance independence if London couldn’t deliver meaningful devolution. I fear Wee Willie is made of weaker stuff, desperately touting for Tory Unionist support as the only means of staying in the game but sacrificing Scotland’s national interest to do so.

The truth is they need an SNP to scare London. Nobody in Whitehall is frightened of Willie and his honours-seeking cohorts. But they fear Sturgeon and what she might do. It was London’s fear of the Nationalists – and the Liberals’ and Labour’s fear of their rising support – that drove devolution in the first place. If the day comes when the SNP is neutered, the game is up, not just for Nationalists and independence, but for those who boast of being proud Scots whose aspirations are met by devolved self-government. That is likely to become a shell after a right-wing victory and a hard Brexit.

This is one of those times when certainty disappears and the stars realign. After this election and after say a year of Brexit talks when reality bites, then we might perceive just what a mess we have talked ourselves into. No doubt it will be spun as the SNP’s fault, again. Yet they offer the one escape route which we could be begging for before long. It’s clear though, that, with Labour ruling out a referendum in favour of a Tory Britain (with nuclear weapons) that we Yessers stand alone. There is to be no support of any kind from our former centre-left friends for anything other than Tory-led hard-right politics.

The history has been forgotten. The consensus abandoned. Labour and the Liberals who once engaged in coalition politics, have now positioned themselves as the enemy, siding with Britnat politics at any cost. It makes voting SNP even more imperative after losing one-time friends

 

 

[andymac]

3 minutes ago, Ally Bongo said:

The Labour representatives got 17 seats in 2012 and 9 in 2017

These representatives were clearly sent a message by the electorate

SNP got 19, Tories got 11 and Labour got 9

So it's not even a case of them going into coalition with the Tories which Labour said they would not do - It's putting the Tories in power

 

11 + 9 > 19

[fishcumnock]

10 hours ago, Ally Bongo said:

http://derekbateman.scot/

Something strange has happened in Scotland. A transformation of sorts has overturned completely the accepted basis of our politics. Broadly, it went like this.

Whatever the deep and abiding mutual mistrust between Labour and the SNP, and notwithstanding disagreements over the constitution with the Liberals, nevertheless all three parties had a shared policy platform on the centre left. It was variegated of course according to the times, but when there was a showdown over Scotland’s national interest they grudgingly stood together – as in the 1997 referendum. They jointly adopted a default position that was anti-Tory, mirroring the perceived attitudes of the voters. When it came to the preparation for devolution, the SNP did stand outside the constitutional convention (against Alex Salmond’s wishes, I believe) but only because they wanted to go further, not because they were opposed. All the main parties accepted as an article of faith that the Tories did not represent Scotland, were undemocratic in opposing subsidiarity and self-determination and were political lepers to be avoided for fear of ridicule and contamination.

Yet today, this entire construct has been overturned to the extent that Labour and the Liberals are actively encouraging people to vote Conservative rather than SNP. It seems true that Willie Rennie has instructed Liberal councillors not to form working arrangements with Nationalists, preferring Tories instead. Kezia Dugdale sought an artifice to cover her embarrassment by saying no deals should be struck with parties of austerity – define – yet in Aberdeen today it appears her group is going into coalition with Conservatives whom I presume we all agree tend to favour austerity.

The SNP has become the unwanted cur of politics, loathed by all as if it were an infection. Vote for anybody opposed to another referendum is the cry from them all. At all costs we must not give in to democracy and allow the Scots another vote. Nothing else matters. Vote No to the SNP. Vote in a Tory if necessary. They are better than the Nationalists because they will ensure you are denied another shot at deciding your future. Any future is better than independence. Any future.

Yet that future is almost certain to be anything up to 20 years of hard-right, selfish austerity-driven, anti European Britnat ideology, removing powers from Holyrood, shoe-horning Scottish interests into a Little Britain policy portfolio designed to solve the problems of Brexit. And wherever you look those problems are building. Scotland will be disproportionately hit compared to England. Professor Michael Keating warns that what the Liberals and Labour spent decades building, aided by a generation of campaigners for devolution, is now under clear and present threat.

Why can’t they see where this is heading? What is blinding the parties of devolution to the obvious? The Supreme Court ruling made clear how flimsy is the underlying power of Holyrood. What will constrain an all-powerful Theresa May who can claim some sort of Scottish mandate to add to her towering Westminster majority?

I read commentators whose declared preference is devolution/ federalism gloating at the slippage they perceive in SNP support and delighting in signs that a referendum policy isn’t obviously popular. I get it that this is a ‘story’ and it cuts against the grain of the ever rising SNP but they are adding to an exaggerated sense that we don’t need an SNP power base. Who, I ask, is going to protect Scots from what is coming?

For a short-term anti-SNP gain, they are abandoning a consensus that seeks to ameliorate the excesses of Tory policy. But what happens if those powers are simply removed because Brexit has created a national UK emergency in which all decisions and all fund raising has to be centralised?

There is I think a glib discounting of the generational harm Brexit could do to our country. It’s as if people have stopped thinking beyond four weeks hence, as if, after a massive Tory win, we can regroup and think again. Liberals and Labour are playing the Tories’ game, doing their job for them and turning the election into an anti-SNP crusade.

The Liberals position in Scotland is a betrayal of all those people who worked for federalism and made the constitutional convention work. I knew many of them who were ready to countenance independence if London couldn’t deliver meaningful devolution. I fear Wee Willie is made of weaker stuff, desperately touting for Tory Unionist support as the only means of staying in the game but sacrificing Scotland’s national interest to do so.

The truth is they need an SNP to scare London. Nobody in Whitehall is frightened of Willie and his honours-seeking cohorts. But they fear Sturgeon and what she might do. It was London’s fear of the Nationalists – and the Liberals’ and Labour’s fear of their rising support – that drove devolution in the first place. If the day comes when the SNP is neutered, the game is up, not just for Nationalists and independence, but for those who boast of being proud Scots whose aspirations are met by devolved self-government. That is likely to become a shell after a right-wing victory and a hard Brexit.

This is one of those times when certainty disappears and the stars realign. After this election and after say a year of Brexit talks when reality bites, then we might perceive just what a mess we have talked ourselves into. No doubt it will be spun as the SNP’s fault, again. Yet they offer the one escape route which we could be begging for before long. It’s clear though, that, with Labour ruling out a referendum in favour of a Tory Britain (with nuclear weapons) that we Yessers stand alone. There is to be no support of any kind from our former centre-left friends for anything other than Tory-led hard-right politics.

The history has been forgotten. The consensus abandoned. Labour and the Liberals who once engaged in coalition politics, have now positioned themselves as the enemy, siding with Britnat politics at any cost. It makes voting SNP even more imperative after losing one-time friends

 

 

this.