I'll tell you something wrong with the Labour party is they've never had a woman leader. Why haven't they? Everyone else has
If you look around there are female prime ministers and presidents everywhere. America hasn't, but at least the Democrats have had a female presidential candidate.
Even the Tories have had two female prime ministers. It's not a criticism of Keir Starmer. It's more about the Labour party.
They chose Corbyn - the elderly male crank - when they had a chance of choosing Yvette Cooper
There's something deeply wrong in Labour. The mentality is all wrong. Yvette Cooper could have been prime minister easily.
Labour is a stagnant pool at the moment. It's not just personality either. You need strength of purpose, and I don't see any.
A labour leader should be able to tell us if Brexit is a good idea. If it isn't, what are they supporting it for? Just to go along with the crowd?
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For once it was a Marr show worth watching, and I learnt many things.
That Michael Gove is going to challenge for the Tory leadership, very likely some time this autumn once the covid vaccine is fully pegged
We also saw Nicola Sturgeon doing the right thing and keep calling it a landslide.
Everyone in Scotland understands the voting system, and they know perfectly well the SNP won an overwhelming landslide. Most people in England probably don't
Gove seems to recognise the problem there. You can't keep telling English people that the SNP didn't win a majority, when the voters in Scotland know they did.
It's not the English you have to persuade.
It's only the constituency result that compares to Westminster. One MSP per constituency, first past the post.
The list seats are there purely to hide the scale of SNP landslide.
To compare Sturgeon with Johnson you calculate it like this:
No. of constituency MSPs divided by 73 multiplied by 650.
For example, if the SNP win 63 constituencies that's a Westminster equivalent of 63/73 x 650 = 560 seats.
A majority of (560 - 325) x 2 = 470
So Nicola Sturgeon will have a Westminster equivalent majority of 470.
What was Botty Johnson's majority again? 80 was it?
Final calculus. The SNP need 65 for a full majority. They have won 39 today with 25 constituencies left.
If they win every constituency tomorrow they will have 64 seats. One short of a majority
What the SNP hoped for was to get a full majority with just constituencies, but they can't do that now.
But that's okay. It just means that they need to win one seat from the list.
We won't know until the counting, but it's just possible that missing out on that seat in Dumbarton could qualify them for one seat on the list.
The point I keep making is that the English don't think of Scotland as part of their own country.
The English have stopped talking about anyone but England. They call it "Britain" but that's just a habit of speech.
What's pretty clear to me is that the English have already rejected the United Kingdom. They don't seem conscious of it yet because their language habits are still the same.
"Britain" seems to be more of a habit of language.
When they talk about "the working class vote" they're not talking about Scotland, they're talking about England.
English newsmen getting rather excited about Hartlepool. It's so inane.
All Hartlepool is going to do is further entrench Botty Johnson in a Brexit that's destroying the country.
The Tories have already beaten Labour. Winning Hartlepool can't beat them again because they've already won. It doesn't help them achieve Brexit and it doesn't help them unify the country in any way.
But most importantly, what winning Hartlepool does is further imprison Johnson in Brexit while driving a deeper and deeper wedge between England and Scotland.