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danieldwilliamI was pointed in the direction of this article on How the SNP Has Failed Scotland.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/the-snp-has-failed-scotland
I didn't like it. Those that like this sort of thing will like it. The headline doesn't match the substance of the article. I'd even go as far as to suggest that it was the Labour Party derping. Worse, I think it continues a wrong headed and counter-productive strain in the Labour Party.
Failed is a pretty high bar. For a political party in government to have failed the country things would have to be in a pretty awful state, and that awful state would have to be the direct fault of acts or omissions willfully taken by the government. Or that the governing party had run on a manifesto to do one thing and the set out deliberately to do the exact opposite. The Irish government failed Ireland. The Icelandic government failed Iceland. The government of Zimbabwe has arguably failed Zimbabwe. When I hear the words "failed the people of..." that's my personal benchmark.
Well, you might say, it's just rhetoric. That's true, but it's bad rhetoric, because it's transparent rhetoric. It's open to two obvious lines of attach. Firstly, the unproductive Nah, Nah, Nah you (Red Tories, Lie Dems, CON Self-Serve-atives - delete as appropriate) are worse. Worse!!! Which leaves the undecided neutral with the view that all sides are pretty poor, that they don't have much interesting working with each other or making things better and they might as well vote for the person with the nicest smile. The second obvious attack is No We're Not - Look What We've Done About... and there follows a list of things that they governing party has done that are either okay or popular or both.
It's the kind of rhetoric of someone who isn't listening to either the other side or the audience but buries their head in the sand when the counter points coming in - a sort of rhestorich.
So a high bar and one open to predicable lines that carry the debate no further forward. And what has the SNP failed to do?
Having set a high bar the article then fails to make it's case. It barely starts to make its case. In order to have failed Scotland I am looking for a series of policy or executive disaster. What I get is this. I learn that spending money is easier than raising it. I learn that we've spent a lot of time thinking the constitution. I learn that the SNP have successfully defended Scotland having more money spent on it per capita than the rest of the UK but they have chosen to reduce the proportion of this money spent on health and education so that Scotland only spends a little more per capita on health and education than England and instead have spent some more money on economic develop and agriculture, and transport and on sports and culture.
And that's it. The article finishes. I think I'm meant to draw the conclusion that because the SNP are spending relatively less on health this decade than the Labour Party did last decade that the SNP has failed Scotland and we'll all be reduced to eating our children and selling their skins to make gloves for Greek pensioners any day now.
Now, I'm open to arguments that health care and education should have more spent on them. I'm also open to arguments that spending more on health and education is not the only measure of success. I'd like to see some discussion about health and education outcomes. More fundamentally, spending a bit less on health care and a bit more on economic development is a political choice. The SNP chooses to address the relative weakness of Scotland's economy at the expense of spending a bit less on health care today. That might be the wrong choice:- the benefits from a better economy in the future might never be enough to offset the loss of better health care today, that might be a choice badly made or badly executed, it might be a choice that wasn't made clear to Scots - we don't know, the article doesn't say. It just presents the SNP as not spending all the money on the NHS and the kids as failing Scotland.
And it's derping - it presents information only in the context of Baysian priors - The SNP are BAD!Or, if you are not one of the shrinking number of Labour Party members - The Labour Party hate the SNP more than the hate Thatcher. The new information in this article is that the Labour party doesn't have any policy response to the SNP, doesn't't have a new campaigning response to the SNP, hasn't changed the way it engages with voters in Scotland or tries to frame the debate. They continue with their old standard that voting for the SNP will be a disaster for Scotland. And when it's not, when the SNP continue to deliver broadly competent government delivering sort of centre-left policies they look like hollow rhetoricians. They also look like they are more concerned about whether they are driving the bus than where the bus is going. Whilst they continue to look like their only contribution to the debate is to exagerate the under-performance of the SNP in order to preserve their own personal position they can only continue to be side-lined by a Scottish electorate which is begining to see a vision for the future. Whilst the Labour Party refuse to share their vision for the future with us, Scots will continue to turn to the SNP for the SNP's future. And more and more they will stop listening to the Labour Party, leaving not effective, credible opposition in Scotland.
And that's a shame, because there is a lot to attack about the SNP in goverment. Their education policy has failed to be delivered and then failed to deliver. The centralisation of Police Scotland has been operationally disruptive and democratically deficient. Their energy policy is rather wind and subsidy-centric. They are perhaps a little too close to business interests in a way that evokes memories of Ireland or Iceland. So, I'd like a Labour Party that actually put itself in opposition to the SNP by proposing better policies and better ways of engaging with the people. I'm not even asking them to propose a radical new economic settlement, I have the Greens for that I'd just like them to stop shouting at the television and start explaining to me how they would make my country better.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/the-snp-has-failed-scotland
I didn't like it. Those that like this sort of thing will like it. The headline doesn't match the substance of the article. I'd even go as far as to suggest that it was the Labour Party derping. Worse, I think it continues a wrong headed and counter-productive strain in the Labour Party.
Failed is a pretty high bar. For a political party in government to have failed the country things would have to be in a pretty awful state, and that awful state would have to be the direct fault of acts or omissions willfully taken by the government. Or that the governing party had run on a manifesto to do one thing and the set out deliberately to do the exact opposite. The Irish government failed Ireland. The Icelandic government failed Iceland. The government of Zimbabwe has arguably failed Zimbabwe. When I hear the words "failed the people of..." that's my personal benchmark.
Well, you might say, it's just rhetoric. That's true, but it's bad rhetoric, because it's transparent rhetoric. It's open to two obvious lines of attach. Firstly, the unproductive Nah, Nah, Nah you (Red Tories, Lie Dems, CON Self-Serve-atives - delete as appropriate) are worse. Worse!!! Which leaves the undecided neutral with the view that all sides are pretty poor, that they don't have much interesting working with each other or making things better and they might as well vote for the person with the nicest smile. The second obvious attack is No We're Not - Look What We've Done About... and there follows a list of things that they governing party has done that are either okay or popular or both.
It's the kind of rhetoric of someone who isn't listening to either the other side or the audience but buries their head in the sand when the counter points coming in - a sort of rhestorich.
So a high bar and one open to predicable lines that carry the debate no further forward. And what has the SNP failed to do?
Having set a high bar the article then fails to make it's case. It barely starts to make its case. In order to have failed Scotland I am looking for a series of policy or executive disaster. What I get is this. I learn that spending money is easier than raising it. I learn that we've spent a lot of time thinking the constitution. I learn that the SNP have successfully defended Scotland having more money spent on it per capita than the rest of the UK but they have chosen to reduce the proportion of this money spent on health and education so that Scotland only spends a little more per capita on health and education than England and instead have spent some more money on economic develop and agriculture, and transport and on sports and culture.
And that's it. The article finishes. I think I'm meant to draw the conclusion that because the SNP are spending relatively less on health this decade than the Labour Party did last decade that the SNP has failed Scotland and we'll all be reduced to eating our children and selling their skins to make gloves for Greek pensioners any day now.
Now, I'm open to arguments that health care and education should have more spent on them. I'm also open to arguments that spending more on health and education is not the only measure of success. I'd like to see some discussion about health and education outcomes. More fundamentally, spending a bit less on health care and a bit more on economic development is a political choice. The SNP chooses to address the relative weakness of Scotland's economy at the expense of spending a bit less on health care today. That might be the wrong choice:- the benefits from a better economy in the future might never be enough to offset the loss of better health care today, that might be a choice badly made or badly executed, it might be a choice that wasn't made clear to Scots - we don't know, the article doesn't say. It just presents the SNP as not spending all the money on the NHS and the kids as failing Scotland.
And it's derping - it presents information only in the context of Baysian priors - The SNP are BAD!Or, if you are not one of the shrinking number of Labour Party members - The Labour Party hate the SNP more than the hate Thatcher. The new information in this article is that the Labour party doesn't have any policy response to the SNP, doesn't't have a new campaigning response to the SNP, hasn't changed the way it engages with voters in Scotland or tries to frame the debate. They continue with their old standard that voting for the SNP will be a disaster for Scotland. And when it's not, when the SNP continue to deliver broadly competent government delivering sort of centre-left policies they look like hollow rhetoricians. They also look like they are more concerned about whether they are driving the bus than where the bus is going. Whilst they continue to look like their only contribution to the debate is to exagerate the under-performance of the SNP in order to preserve their own personal position they can only continue to be side-lined by a Scottish electorate which is begining to see a vision for the future. Whilst the Labour Party refuse to share their vision for the future with us, Scots will continue to turn to the SNP for the SNP's future. And more and more they will stop listening to the Labour Party, leaving not effective, credible opposition in Scotland.
And that's a shame, because there is a lot to attack about the SNP in goverment. Their education policy has failed to be delivered and then failed to deliver. The centralisation of Police Scotland has been operationally disruptive and democratically deficient. Their energy policy is rather wind and subsidy-centric. They are perhaps a little too close to business interests in a way that evokes memories of Ireland or Iceland. So, I'd like a Labour Party that actually put itself in opposition to the SNP by proposing better policies and better ways of engaging with the people. I'm not even asking them to propose a radical new economic settlement, I have the Greens for that I'd just like them to stop shouting at the television and start explaining to me how they would make my country better.
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no subject
Date: 2015-06-26 03:35 pm (UTC)It was cheery, well intentioned conversation between 4 folk who have around 120 years of of Labour history in total, and he just did not, or would not, understand what the three of us were trying to tell him about why we'd voted SNP this time.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-26 03:58 pm (UTC)One of the foundational ideas in one of them is to start where your target audience is and it occurs that if most of your target audience think the SNP are okay then starting by telling them that the SNP are the devil's stormtroopers is not going to be as persuasive as saying, yeah, the SNP are okay but we're better, or the SNP are better but when you have a proper dispassionate look at how indepence will work out, it's not as good as what we're offering, which is...
And you'd think having been on the wrong end of the 2015 election result that your starting point for analysis wouldn't be to assume that the electorate had gone mad or stupid.