While the SNP certainly ran a good campaign and Nicola Sturgeon was be far the most impressive leader of the political parties much of the SNP success is really down to Labour’s failures.
Scottish Labour ran a lazy negative campaign bereft of ideas or any positive reason to actually vote for them.
Scottish Labour, already in its death throws following the referendum and the previous leaders resignation, instead of taking a serious look at what its doing north of the border instead parachutes in a Blairite careerist chancer in the form of Jim Murphy.
After some brief initial overtures to “Glasgow Man” – lapsed Labour voters in the west of Scotland who voted Yes in the referendum, followed by some ridiculous nonsense about drinking at football matches the negative campaigning got turned up to 11 and Scottish Labour’s entire message became about why not to vote for someone else.
To his credit he had his Labour drones very much on message not a single one of them made an utterance that deviated from “SNP Baaaddd!” “Vote SNP get Tory” and “The Largest Party gets to form the Government” for the entire campaign. But when your message is so lacking in imagination, positivity and credibility it doesn’t really matter how often you repeat it.
Meanwhile while the Tories were putting together witty videos showing Ed Milliband dancing to Alex Salmond’s tune what they were really doing was making him dance to their tune.
After losing some initial ground on non-dom tax the Tories played Milliband like a cheap fiddle over the economy and possible coalition arrangements.
He failed to make it clear the Labour was not responsible for the banking crisis and he failed to drive home the fact that the Tories hadn’t actually delivered austerity and had instead actually been far closer to what Labour spending plans would have been.
Rather then acknowledging the possibility that he might be willing to work with the SNP and that the SNP aren’t the Scottish devils described by the right wing press he simply sang to their tune. He could have grasped this particular thistle while pointing out the hypocrisy of the Tories position on coalitions (although in the end they won a majority)
Labour’s failure in this election lies firmly at their feet. “Pandafied” in Scotland and well beaten in England. Their only way back is to realise this fact and stop blaming others for their abject failure.
Meanwhile Jim Murphy hangs on to his job like a lone Japanese soldier on a Pacific Island still fighting the Americans long after his side has been annhilated
