Labour hasn't quite finished shooting itself in the foot

[danohu]

BBC:

The Scottish National Party has called on the Liberal Democrats to join a "progressive alliance" involving Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
...
Labour dismissed the SNP's progressive alliance suggestion as a desperate attempt by Mr Salmond to make himself look relevant.

WTF Labour?! That's 6 votes we desperately need to keep the Tories out. What are you doing not just turning them down, but dissing the SNP while you're at it? Seriously, can anybody explain this? It seems an utterly bizarre reaction in the circumstances.

Good work to all those at the electoral reform demo, btw. Sorry not to be there; have too many long-overdue things to get done.

Comments

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

WTF LABOUR. SERIOUSLY.

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

If it was a Scottish Labour guy who dismissed it, the answer is easy. Scottish Labour LOATHE the SNP. Them being so blinded by that they could do something stupid like this is not surprising.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

ah, thanks for the (possible) explanation

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

Seriously, a lot of Scottish Labour hates the SNP more than they hate the Tories.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

yep, looks like it, judging by Douglas Alexander: http://www.scotsman.com/news/Labour39s-Douglas-Alexander-34can39t-envisage34.6286290.jp

if they're going to be petulant about the SNP, I don't see how they can hope to have any lib-lab coalition. They'll need those votes: even if they scrape together a notional majority, at some point there will be rebellions or defections, and they'll have to rely on the nationalists. Silly buggers.

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of problems with a LIbLab agreement just now. The Labour attitude to the SNP (which isn't just that Labour are Unionist, or would lose any chance of forming a UK government without Scotland: in Scotland, SNP are the party's main opponents, and if anything are to the *left* of Labour; to many Labour people in Scotland, it was inconceivable that Labour wouldn't be in power in Holyrood, and they hate the fact that the SNP have formed a government), that's just one. There's also the attitude of a chunk of Labour to PR. This also includes a lot of Scottish Labour MPs, who would lose their sinecures if the voting system changed. Like the Tories, they think if there's a change to PR, they will never govern alone again, and governing alone is what they really want to do.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

Scotland declaring independence would give the Tories a majority, kick Gordon Brown out of office, solve the West Lothian question and make it much easier for the Tories to remain in power from now on. If he palmed off the debts of RBS and HBOS onto the new Scottish government it'd solve a good fraction of the national debt too.

Fortunately SNP + Tories + PC don't have enough seats to pull it off so hopefully this option stays in hilarious alternative reality land.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

That was a seriously stupid foot-in-mouth comment, yes.

[gerald_duck]

You'd prefer Labour to the Conservatives? But I thought you were left-wing. :-p

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

oh, now that's just silly;) Labour may be far to the right of my own beliefs, but they're still on the left of the Conservatives.

[gerald_duck]

I look at the war in Iraq, detention without trial for suspected terrorists, control orders, ID cards, DNA retention, curtailment of the right to trial by jury, the Digital Economy Bill, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, etc. and I doubt that, you know…