THE Scottish LibDems are having their spring get-together in Perth this weekend. Not that you’d know it from the daily conference newsletter, however. Item one on the agenda is “Welcome to Edinburgh”. Media boss Tim Hustler was confident who was to blame. “Let’s put it on Adam Stachura,” he said, coolly dropping his party’s campaign director right in it.
STIRLING SNP held their annual Robert the Bruce fundraiser last week to commemorate “one of the most famous warriors of his generation”. But did diners know they were also raising dosh for a modern day fighter? The event was in the Golden Lion Hotel, and it’s owner is Paul Waterston, the Scottish Licensed Trade boss who recently sent Finance Secretary Derek Mackay homeward tae think again about botched business rate rises.
AS Unspun is famously high brow, imagine our joy at hearing of a forthcoming paper from Leeds University. “The Rhetoric of Alex Salmond and the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum” will, we’re told, be the first article to examine the great leader through “the Aristotelian modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, logos)” and his “construction of a specific form of Scottishness”. And you just thought he made up guff about oil being a bonus.
TALKING of Mr Salmond, the former FM got pelters recently for a video in which he delivered a Trump-like rant against the “Yoon media”. But a recent SNP members magazine has gone one better. Its headline on an item about a newspaper correction is titled “Fake news”. How long before Eck accuses MI5 of tapping his calls and pinching his racing tips, we wonder.
WE’VE also enjoyed the new book Political Communication in Britain featuring an interview with advertising guru Jeremy Sinclair, chair of Tory-loving M&C Saatchi. He recalls being drafted in to help Labour-dominated Better Together in late 2014. “They were the worst client: inefficient, dogmatic, unyielding.” Annoying? Not at all. “We took great comfort from this,” Jez confides, “because we thought ‘these boys are going to be the opposition when it comes to the election’, and so it transpired.” Some of those “boys” now run Kezia Dugdale’s office.
SCOTTISH Labour spindoctor Alan Roden got terribly excited over the Budget when Philip Hammond said the nations of the UK were “stronger together”. This sounded not a million miles from Labour’s “together stronger” campaign. “He’s the Magpie Chancellor!” Red Roddo declared to the press. “He may have stolen our lines, but sadly he’s not stolen our policies.” Tragically, observers noted, he has no intention of stealing Jeremy Corbyn either.
Finally, on spindoctors, the Scottish Tories’ Adam Morris got into a Twitter spat with Labour MSP Monica Lennon over International Women’s Day. After she accused him of “mansplaining feminism” to her, he accused her of “being an erse”, which we understand is a medical term. When Ms Lennon hit back, Mr Morris, never one to stop digging, replied, “Sorry, can you womansplain that to me please.” Only in the ultra-modern Tories...
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