The Psychology of Voting Labour
Gordon Brown’s announcement that he’d lead as “New Labour” must be further disillusionment to those dimwits in the Scottish Labour Party still kidding themselves that he was waiting in the wings with a big redistributive package of Old Labour politics.
Haw haw, talk about kidding yersels. But how does such a declaration go down amongst the comrades in Scotland?
The Sunday Herald has Cathcart down as a non-event, but here are three reasons why they might not be saying the same by next weekend. 1) Lord Ha Ha's pyrotechnics fresh in the minds of voters 2) Residual anger against the war in Iraq as the country spirals to civil war 3) Local issues (on health) that scream of Labour incompetence and ideological madness (in both Livinsgton and Cathcart). Going against this are the fact that Watson's disgrace smears politics in general, rather than the Labour Party, the split vote and the lack of inspiring candidates or articulate opposition.
Some have it that the Labour Loyalists can bring themselves to vote against Labour if the candidate used to be in ‘ra Party’ ala Gorgeous George, Ken Livingston, Dennis Canavan. The second psychological factor is that once you have voted away from Labour once, you are more likely to do it again.
The irony of this is that the beguiling and slightly embarrassing Pat Lally may scupper the SNP’s chances of a Glasgow breakthrough standing on a ticket that none of the other candidates oppose.
The Green’s Essex girl Chloe Stewart is campaigning on Climate Change and accusing the SNP of fossil fuel fetishism over ‘Scotland’s Oil’: "For 30 years Labour has held power in Glasgow yet it is still the poverty capital of Scotland with huge inequality, poor health and an environment that's bad and getting worse - their record is damning. The SNP is operating as if we were back in the late seventies banging on about Scotland's oil as though climate change simply wasn't happening.”
All well and good though I'm not sure if 'global warming' is a focused enough campaign for a by-election (?), and the greens have to ask, will the oil NOT be burnt if we don't control our own natural resources?
With these by-elections being too close to call its instructive to watch the Scottish Press Corps (aka Labour chums writing from the pub) in action. Read this hilarious rebuff by the Herald’s Chief political Correspondent. Just a shame that the recent nationalist newspaper was so dire, poorly conceived, under-financed and badly written.
The only way forward is a constitutional convention uniting the Greens, SNP and SSP on a visionary collective ticket.
Previous Election results in Glasgow Cathcart:
Scottish Parliamentary Election results
Westminster Election results
European Election results
