Padre Andrew

That point has been debated on Wings Over Scotland today: http://wingsoverscotland.com/mission-1-phase-2/#more-62689 " What then of public opinion in England? How would UKIP and southern Tories take that?" There's some fun to be had here...

Would you trust that man as far as you could throw him? His ‘100-towns’ indyref tour was described as a ‘100-day job application’ for the position of Scottish Labour leader

Lord p*shypants was on the radio earlier calling for a quick fix, elect a leader quickly (his preference was for Gordon Brown), get everything back to normal. The next few months are going to provide some brilliant entertainment.

Moldova

Bomb disposal van and police escort were haring on blue lights towards Dundee on Friday evening as we were driving back to Perth.

I think we need details of this

John McTernan on Crossfire this morning displayed all the proof needed that some people in the Labour party are in complete denial. The SNP “are in serious trouble” having been “smashed in their heartlands” in the referendum. That’s right: the kind of serious trouble that sees party membership more than triple after the vote. His line was straight from the 1970s – essentially ‘A vote for the SNP is a vote for the Tories’. No notion that anything has moved on in the last 40 years. The sense of belief in Labour’s right to govern borders on parody. I don’t like quoting Tories, but Alex Massie’s line today is priceless: “They’re the political equivalent of Rangers football club. All this strutting around shouting We are the People. All these delusions of grandeur and future glory. Once upon a time it inspired some kind of terror. Now it’s simply laughable. In each case these people have no idea how daft they look. People are tittering. A party can cope with being hated. That’s to be expected and just the way it goes. But a party cannot survive ridicule.”

Please let it be that someone has stored all those images of Labour and Tory politicians celebrating together. Every election leaflet in Labour heartlands deserves to include them.

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/25/79/58/257958054202cf121607eda36fbbdc5f.jpg Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgement.

Michael Connarty MP on just now saying it’s got to be Gordon Brown. There’s nothing to say the Scottish leader has to be in Holyrood, which is pretty much exactly the problem for Labour. They are still treating Holyrood as a toon council.

Cut the guy some slack. He managed to get 'league' right - that probably took it out of him.

£300,000 down the drain. That's if the deposit is still £500, and I reckon there are close to 600 seats outwith Scotland. We can do a lot more with that kind of money that throw it away.

Mark Steel on good form in the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/with-scotland-camerons-taken-broken-promises-to-a-whole-new-level-9799747.html

Many in Kosovo are ethnic Albanians, and would rather be part of a greater Albania, but Serbia will have none of it. They think they’ve already lost too much of their own territory after the civil war. Out of interest, how far away physically would you have to be to control a drone like that?

Just as we get a precious away point the Irish nick a goal with seconds to go. Germany don't look so hard to beat now - except we couldn't manage it

Just managing to catch this [audio only] from Rio. Come on!

Glad it was a good day out. What we need to do is include more people who weren't like-minded before 18th Sept. I couldn't take another '45'.

This will be the first home game I’ve missed in 13 years, and it’s only because I’m working away I can’t go. I hesitated about the season ticket because they were milking it, but in the end, like most people, I gave in. Have a good day, and Get The Result! I’ll think of you all from sun-drenched Rio.

You may be right that they deserve to be finished, but we can’t write them off that easily. The habit of voting Labour is ingrained with many people – it goes very deep, and it used to mean something significant. FWIW I think it’s largely tribal now. How else do you vote for a party whose leader announces on TV that Scots aren’t genetically programmed to take political decisions? That level of contempt for the people who elect you is staggering. The Labour-for-Indy people have got an interesting few months to make up their minds whether to stick with their party or press for real change. There’s a bit of me that kind of hopes they stick with the Labour party because that will maintain the festering fault line in the party, and they’ll use up precious time and energy bickering over that. Bottom line, though: don’t write Labour off. They’ve been around a long time, and even though they’re incredibly out of touch they’ve learnt over the years how to exploit and maintain their power base. They’re in slow decline, not having a cardiac arrest.

Had me going there for a minute

I just hope someone has copies of all those pictures of Labour and Tories celebrating together. They will be gold dust at every election from now on.

Chimes with things I've been mulling over this weekend. It's bizarre, but the law of unintended consequences is offering up several unexpected possibilities which favour the YES campaign.

Heard today that a colleague of mine who's been a member of the Kirkcaldy constituency Labour party for 40 years has just resigned in disgust. We all know SNP membership is rocketing; any other stories of Labour losing members?

Not everyone wants to join a political party, so while I welcome new members to the SNP the most important thing is to keep the broad Yes coalition alive. That must be broad enough to encompass Labour-for-Indy, Greens, SSP, and those of no political party. It must also keep on board Women-for-Independence and all the other pro-Yes groups which helped propel the campaign forward. Thplinth’s maths [page 3 of this thread] show that Yes is much bigger than any one party. Any splitting of the Yes campaign is destructive, so we have to be strategic about this. That means a degree of compromise – not every party or group will get everything it wants. It’s a short-term solution to present a united front that the No lot won’t be able to ignore – or resist. Happily they’ll be fighting each other at the general and Scottish elections. If we play this one right they will be the ones who split. It’s all to play for.