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SNP support crumbling

Rolfe said:
I think you underestimate the sheer terror factor when regarding the prospect of Iain Gray as FM and the Scottish Labour numpties in government.

Except, when I mentioned that last night at our local SNP branch meeting, someone pointed out with perfect truth that since most of the electorate didn't even know who Iain Gray was, it probably wasn't as significant a factor as I was imagining.

Rolfe.
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Has the theory been proposed that so few people knew who Ian Gray was that they failed to identify him during the televised debates, assumed he was from one of the fringe parties and that either i) Labour hadn't bothered to turn up, so decided to give them a kicking for taking the vote for granted or ii) took one look at Annabel Goldie and thought "Henry McLeish has let himself go a bit!"
 
Heh, I overlooked the date started for this thread and was quite surprised :p !

Interesting to read, though. I tend to be a person who believes opinion polls will be the results.
 
Rolfe said:
I think you underestimate the sheer terror factor when regarding the prospect of Iain Gray as FM and the Scottish Labour numpties in government.
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I've heard this a lot about certain politicians and parties. "Can you imagine the <emotion> if <this leader> from <this party> got into <this level of government>!? <potentially humorous exclamation!>

I honestly don't know why people think it makes too much of a difference. Labour, Libs, SNP, Tories... parties "lucky" enough to have gained votes and have entered power. They all lie, they all steal, they all make false promises; they're equally bad (except Tories in Scotland, they're worse).

Even the (h)armless Greens, if they got enough power you can be sure that they'd just end up like everyone else. Nick Clag is good example. He, and the Libs, did seem like a viable option in the 2010 election (at first), and they had the potential to at least be slightly less politiciany and corrupt as the main two paries... yet as soon as Cleggers got a sniff of power he began answering questions like a politician, ie not. Politics corrupts; I can't wait to work in it.
 
I don't think it was the prospect of lying or stealing or corruption that was scary, with Gray. He seemed to me to be a perfectly decent guy, and certainly not registering on the liar/corruption scale that I noticed.

It was a competence question. "Nice but dim" semed to sum it up. Whenever he opened his mouth, he sounded slow, unimpressive - not thick exactly, just nowhere near the top percentile. It occurs to me to wonder what his IQ is.

Decent junior civil servant or teacher material, hopelessly miscast as FM.

Rolfe.
 
I will certainly agree with you that he was dour. I think it is unfortunate that a party can lose votes due to the leader of it not having a good personality - and I don't even care about Labour. Ugh, politics... I am disappoint.

Be good if Social Libertarianism was feasible...
 
I saw Gray debate Salmond at FM question time on a number of occasions.

In addition to his presentation - which was dour - his grasp of many of the issues was very poor. In contrast to the Tories, who were trying to make constructive comments, his prime aim seemed to be just to shoot everything down because it was an SNP idea.

I recall one particular example where he was criticising Salmond for not doing more for training of the unemployed in Lanarkshire. Salmond pointed out that the SNP had proposed a significant increase in funding for Scottish Enterprise in that specific area but that Gray had personally voted against it.

Likewise McLeish, on the Friday morning following the election, observed that the Labour group had voted against the recommendations of the cross-party group on knife crime which he had tabled - again apparently simply because it was an SNP idea.

The final straw for me was the p***-poor Labour response of alcohol pricing. It was clear to voters, I would suggest, that Gray didn't have any better ideas of his own. The fact that the Labour Westminster group seemed to think a minimum pricing strategy was quite a good idea wasn't lost on people.

I have a secret theory that he's some sort of SNP sleeper in the manner of The Manchurian Candidate......
 
JAStewart said:
I will certainly agree with you that he was dour. I think it is unfortunate that a party can lose votes due to the leader of it not having a good personality - and I don't even care about Labour. Ugh, politics... I am disappoint.

Be good if Social Libertarianism was feasible...
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I don't think it was as simple as "personality". It was a certain quickness of mind he seemed to lack. His delivery was slow and ponderous, and it almost seemed like having a dialogue with a speak-your-weight machine. (Though maybe it would be good for Alex to have exactly such a dialogue some day soon.)

A national leader needs to be able to think on his feet; to be nimble, and engage his audience and his sparring partners. Gray didn't seem to be able to do that. We need someone engaging and alive speaking for Scotland, and Iain Gray just didn't fit that part of the bill.

Rolfe.
 
The SNP just won a council by-election with an even bigger swing than at the general election.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-13467590

51.3% of first preference votes in an STV system. That's an increase of 15.2% from 2007, compared to an increase of 10.6% in the equivalent constituency on 5th May. There's another council by-election coming up soon, and of course there is the Greenock by-election for David Cairns's Westminster seat.

The SNP wouldn't expect to take Greenock, which remained Labour even on 5th May, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

I think this is all particularly interesting as it has come on the back of an incumbent government. This isn't a huge swing of disaffected voters desperate for change at any cost, like for example the Labour landslide of 1997, it's the sitting party that has actually been running the show under quite adverse circumstances for four years, that has attracted the tsunami.

The 2007-11 Holyrood government was of course the first time the SNP had been in government nationally, ever. I don't quite know what to think because this is rather uncharted water.

Rolfe.
 
Architect said:
I saw Gray debate Salmond at FM question time on a number of occasions.



I have a secret theory that he's some sort of SNP sleeper in the manner of The Manchurian Candidate......
Click to expand...

It struck me more than once that if he didn't want to win he was doing an excellent job towards that very end.
 
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