Eddie Barnes - Going for Goldie
Big day for Annabel Goldie today. She's had her fair share of brickbats in recent days, with questions being asked about why the Scots Tories aren't doing any better than, for example,their counterparts in Wales. Goldie is giving a speech this evening, widely trailed in today's papers, in which she is expected to lay out how a Conservative government at Westminster will deal with the SNP Government in Edinburgh.
The pressure is on Goldie and her team to deliver a decent return at the election. If they were to have a bad night and fail to add to their sum of one seat in Scotland - whilst the Tories win in England - it would make life very difficult indeed for her, presenting Alex Salmond with a gift. You can sense that some of the heat is beginning to show; David Mundell, the shadow Scottish Secretary, recently warned Scottish voters that they couldn't rely on the English to kick out Labour. It hinted at the frustration in the Scots Tory camp over the difficulty of translating a general sense of support for change into Tory crosses on the ballot paper.
Mundell also came up with one of the more interesting comments of the election campaign so far. He hopes if and when the Tories win at Westminster, the old lines trotted out by Labour and the SNP about "18 years of hurt" and "we'll take no lessons from the party of the poll tax" will have to be binned, as the reality of the new cuddly Conservative government erases memories of the last nasty Thatcherite one. The parallel is the victory of the SNP in 2007....they won, they got into power, the world didn't actually fall to pieces as opponents claimed, they gained in popularity. Similarly, if Cameron gets in, and isn't seen with a handbag and twinset, eventually Scots will feel more comfortable thinking of themselves as Conservative voters, rather than considering it a badge of shame.
Well, possibly. It rather ignores the fact that Cameron is going to have to hack back at the public sector as soon as he gets in - thereby comforming to type. And even Mundell is right, it won't help them in the coming campaign. Tough times ahead.
The pressure is on Goldie and her team to deliver a decent return at the election. If they were to have a bad night and fail to add to their sum of one seat in Scotland - whilst the Tories win in England - it would make life very difficult indeed for her, presenting Alex Salmond with a gift. You can sense that some of the heat is beginning to show; David Mundell, the shadow Scottish Secretary, recently warned Scottish voters that they couldn't rely on the English to kick out Labour. It hinted at the frustration in the Scots Tory camp over the difficulty of translating a general sense of support for change into Tory crosses on the ballot paper.
Mundell also came up with one of the more interesting comments of the election campaign so far. He hopes if and when the Tories win at Westminster, the old lines trotted out by Labour and the SNP about "18 years of hurt" and "we'll take no lessons from the party of the poll tax" will have to be binned, as the reality of the new cuddly Conservative government erases memories of the last nasty Thatcherite one. The parallel is the victory of the SNP in 2007....they won, they got into power, the world didn't actually fall to pieces as opponents claimed, they gained in popularity. Similarly, if Cameron gets in, and isn't seen with a handbag and twinset, eventually Scots will feel more comfortable thinking of themselves as Conservative voters, rather than considering it a badge of shame.
Well, possibly. It rather ignores the fact that Cameron is going to have to hack back at the public sector as soon as he gets in - thereby comforming to type. And even Mundell is right, it won't help them in the coming campaign. Tough times ahead.
Labels: Annabel Goldie, Eddie Barnes
posted by Administrator at
12:46
3 Comments:
There is a major story about Goldie and the Tories on Today's Scotsman website, so why is there no comments box?
What happened to the Scottish Tory Boy blog?
Is its dissapearance related to recent complaints made to Annabelle Goldie, who had previously demanded a stringent investigation of Scottish parliament staff use of IT equipment to post on blogs, about Scottish Tory Boy's habit of posting picture links to holocaust mass graves in relation to contemporary parliamentary parties he opposed, on such sites as this?
More lies from Ayrshire Scot.
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