Last weekend brought what must be one of the worst examples of political canvassing in Scotland as the Labour party continued running an election campaign when no election has been called. Labour’s attempts to generate excitement for an election which may never happen has been going on for weeks now, with them spending vast amounts of time, effort and money on a campaign that doesn’t yet exist and may yet never exist if the Tories in Westminster get their own way.
If Labour want to spend their money on non-existing elections, that’s up to them, as long as they stick to the bounds of decency and propriety. However, on this occasion, they definitely crossed the line.
Labour sent out an election communication to constituents in Rutherglen and Hamilton West pretending to be a personal letter from a local doctor using a handwriting font, presumably to try to fool people into believing it was a genuine personal letter. The imprint at the end of page one of the leaflet (let’s call it for what it actually is), which political parties are obliged to add to election material, gives away the source and the reason for it being sent out.
Note that so-called Scottish Labour couldn’t even bring themselves to support a Scottish printing business. The leaflet was printed in Wales. The imprint is only on the first page of the leaflet, hoping, no doubt, that people won’t notice it.
The local doctor, Dr. Richard Watson, the alleged creator of the leaflet, is a Labour party member, one of the few remaining Labour party members in the constituency, but at no time in the leaflet is he identified as such. (Am I the only one who has difficulty in referring him as Dr, Watson, bringing back memories of the much nicer Dr, Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories.) As an aside, he was recently in the press for getting punched by one of his patients. While no one will condone violence against a doctor, or anyone else, his reputation is such that some may be surprised that it’s only happened once.
The leaflet reveals that the Labour party’s master plan for regaining the seat is to trash the reputation of the incumbent MP, Margaret Ferrier. They are helped in this by Commons regulations which prohibit Margaret from challenging Labour’s nasty slurs, but allow Labour free hand in making them. Slurs are all Labour have as they don’t have any Scottish policies, policy making being reserved to London, and, in any case, London’s policies are virtually indistinguishable from the Tories and wouldn’t go down well with many Scottish voters. So best not to tell anybody.
Is this leaflet, piling more stress on Margaret Ferrier, the action of a doctor, whose Hippocratic oath requires him to do no harm, or is it the action of an uncaring politician who will do or say anything, no matter what harm it does, as long as his candidate benefits. Is there not a conflict here that needs to be investigated? I wonder what the General Medical Council’s view would be?
Let’s look at the leaflet in more detail.
We’ll ignore the first part of the first page, which is just Watson telling us all how good he was during the pandemic and how he thinks he never made a mistake (would it be churlish to say he’s just not admitting to any mistakes?), because he apparently believes that making a mistake, no matter what else you’ve done, means the end of everything. We know Margaret made a mistake. I won’t go through the background to it as I’ve already covered it here for anyone who hasn’t read it, but should it be the end of everything, especially as she’s already been punished, much more severely than any other MP who broke the rules.
I’ll just make a couple of comments.
Average daily new cases and admissions to hospital because of Covid at the last week of September, 2020, when the incident took place, were low at 538 and 35 respectively, compared with (eg.) 2,352 cases and 201 admissions the following January (from Scottish Government statistics). As a GP, Watson would know that, so his statement is at least an exaggeration.
The leaflet was sent out last Thursday, before the planned Commons vote the next day. The statement that Margaret was suspended for 30 days is therefore incorrect (the vote wasn’t held because of lack of MPs), just wishful thinking on Labour’s part.
The second page is just party political nonsense. Labour’s replacement “lives here and cares about our community”, so what so does Margaret.
“While Margaret was breaking rules”, really, when we are talking about one incident. He was “trying to support his students in impossible situations”. “Impossible”, does that mean he didn’t succeed?
However, there is one sentence in the leaflet that I agree with. “We deserve to have a functioning MP.”, because that’s what we have now. Margaret is a well-liked, hard-working MP who helped many of her constituents during the pandemic, a fact to which many would attest. She has not “failed to represent the people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West “, but there’s every likelihood that replacing her with a Labour party stooge would do just that. People stopped voting for Labour because they realised they were useless, all promises and no delivery, and this nasty leaflet is unlikely to change many minds.
Labour are calling for a “fresh voice”. Remember what the Labour party brought to Scotland when they were in charge in Westminster. They brought PFI, a funding scheme for building projects which forced local councils to pay vastly more for schools, hospitals and other public buildings than they were worth and is arguably the main reason for the funding pressures councils are in today, because they are still paying for Labour mistakes as they will be for the next 20 to 25 years. Remember also when Labour returned £1.5Bn to Westminster, because they really couldn’t think of anything to spend the money on. Still, it got Jack McConnell a peerage, so it was money well (not) spent.
So, let’s look at the person Labour are proposing to replace the hard-working incumbent, Margaret Ferrier. Even local Labour activists didn’t want him. He was imposed by the party in preference to four other local possible candidates and many activists have said they won’t support him. An admittedly left-wing view of his anointment can be seen here.
Remember too that Labour want to deny the people of Scotland the ability to decide on their form of government. The Labour party died in Scotland following their alliance with the Tories in the Better Together campaign in the independence referendum which showed clearly that they were just another English party with little or no interest in Scotland. Nothing that’s happened since them has made anyone rethink that view.
Is this the fresh voice the people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West want and need, a bunch of unionist chancers whose only policy to support the people is to try to trash the reputation of a well-liked, hard-working local MP?
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Angry Weegie 