Pieces of eight

Today Ed Balls was due to make a speech in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in which he would say that

There is only one way to end Tory austerity in Scotland and that’s by voting Labour.

This from the man who said that said that there wasn't anything major in George Osborne's budget that he would reverse.  Yes, not quite following the logic there Ed.  His plan, if you can call it that, is not to make the cuts quite so deep as the Tories intend.  In other words, do what Labour always does and tinker round the edges but fundamentally do things the same way.

His other keynote from the speech was to be

And third, because a vote for the SNP means it is more likely David Cameron stays in Downing Street. Every vote in this election that might allow the Tories to be the largest party is a vote for Tory austerity to continue.

Ah, our old friend 'Vote SNP, get Tories', with a side helping of 'the largest party gets to form the next government'.  In the past Scots have continually voted Labour and half the time got a Tory government anyway, so you might just as well say 'Vote Labour, get Tory' and it would have the advantage of having more truth to it.

Labour in Scotland are beginning to sound like a bunch of ill-trained parrots, who have only managed to pick up two or three phrases which they continually squawk until people are sick of hearing them.

Have we heard about the independent Scottish policies that Jim Murphy claims he has the power to set?  Have we hell.  All we've heard is naked bribery from Mr Murphy and, even worse, naked bribery from Gordon Brown, who is now most definitely a retired politician and therefore in no position to make promises to anyone.  (Presumably Mr Brown is now involved in the hope that he can sprinkle some magic fairy dust over the Labour campaign, assuming he kept some after the referendum).  Half of the promises they are making relate to matters devolved to Holyrood, which makes them irrelevant to this election.

Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon has announced that Trident is still a redline issue and an alternative approach to debt reduction that would grow the economy.  People many not agree with her views, but at least she is thinking outside the box, which comes across as a breath of fresh air after the cosy consensus of the big two parties. That's why many Scots are turning towards voting SNP, on the basis that if you vote SNP you get SNP, and with luck they might just shake up Westminster.

Labour seem at the moment to be set on repeating their limited mantras ad nauseam, in the hope that eventually they can wear people down into voting for them just to get them to shut up.  Time to put the cover over the parrot cage.