Thursday 19 February 2015

The Man Who Would Be King


Jim Murphy’s starting really to piss me off. 

Ideally I’d be operating a policy of diversity on this blog by occasionally lambasting other targets, such as the splendidly named tax-pauchler, Lord Fink, and his getaway drivers HSBC, or “Helping Slimeballs Blatantly Cheat”, as they’re never, ever called in the Telegraph.  But invariably, before I get round even to sharpening my pencil, Jim outdoes them all with yet another tripe-laden pronouncement I’d have to be comatose to ignore. I’m starting to worry that folk will suspect me of being secretly obsessed with him, and of having a Murphy shrine with a potato-shaped candle hidden away in the depths of my wardrobe, next to a slightly whiffy Scotland top.

This week we first saw Jim on Sunday afternoon, lurking outside New Douglas Park plying puzzled Hamilton Accies and Aberdeen fans with flyers about his new campaign (copyright Scottish Conservatives, 2013) to re-introduce bevvying at the fitba’.  The BBC was as likely to ignore this as Stephen Fry is to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, so, as Monday’s Morning Call switchboard combusted into a glob of melted wires, it initially looked like a net-bustin’ publicity coup for Team Murphy’s silky-skilled spinmeisters.

But no such luck! Alas for Jim, the bevvying proposal doesn’t enjoy the universal acclaim to which he normally feels entitled whenever he breaks wind or claims to have spent his entire childhood in a drawer.  It’s what cadaverous civil servants smirkingly call “brave”, when they really mean “batshit crazy”. The benefits are questionable, the downside’s a nightmare in waiting, even punters in favour only give about 0.001% of a toss, medical experts and domestic abuse support groups are spitting rivets, and in the public mind it irrevocably associates Labour with the 1980 Cup Final riot. What sort of bacon sandwich face will Ed pull when he susses out the electoral consequences of that?

Never one to walk past a wasps’ nest without giving it a good head-butt, Jim decided to turn the argument into a class issue.  It wisnae fair, he girned, that posh rugby fans could sip vintage claret to escape the depressing spectacle unfolding on the pitch, while salt-of-the-earth fitba’ fans were marooned in anguished sobriety, weeping into their bunnets. 

Now, far be it from me, surreptitiously shredding my old copies of the Hutchie Herald, to deny that class distinctions are still a problem in society.  The next time rugby fans dismantle Murrayfield in a Beaujolais-fuelled rampage, I’ll bet the judge treats them with kid gloves and settles for impounding their Waitrose loyalty cards.

But, in the context of the fitba’ bevvy debate, Jim’s sudden emergence as a class warrior rang about as true as a plastic bell on a Noddy hat.  It looked like clueless pandering, because that’s exactly what it was.  I don’t know, maybe he was trying to send some sort of signal to his information-starved East Renfrewshire constituents. “So long, ya middle-class pricks!  I don’t need you and your fondue evenings any more, and I’ll be coming round later to piss in your koi carp pools!”

Now, here’s a tip for any masochists wanting a truly soul-destroying job: try being Team Murphy’s Expectations Manager.  You’d have struggled to convince even seasoned Murphy-watchers that his pitiful embrace of the booze culture would be the high point of his week, but, betcha by golly wow, it was.

The descent into the abyss began on Tuesday, when Jim’s attention predictably flitted back to that trusty old SLab hobbyhorse, NHS Scotland, where the standard narrative is to berate the SNP for falling short of self-imposed targets embarrassingly beyond the competence of just about any Labour administration in recorded history. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to contemplate Labour running the Scottish NHS without horrifying visions of Jackie Baillie holding me down while Iain Gray tries to saw off my leg, only to realise halfway through that it’s his own.

Let’s be honest: the idea that NHS Scotland is “in crisis” is the product of one end of a horse, and I don’t mean the vanilla end. Some areas are under pressure, for sure, but it would help if staff didn’t have to waste countless additional hours completing fatuous Freedom of Information Requests lodged by Scottish Labour via its BBC representative, Eleanor “Misery-Guts” Bradford.  Nor does it exactly boost their morale when Labour then “weaponsises” this information, by cutting out any bits favourable to the SNP and packing the gaps with mince before launching the result indiscriminately at the mass media.

Anyway, Tuesday’s snippet of data seemed to Jim like a real humdinger, too juicy to allow Kezia to bugger it up in First Minister’s Questions, so he thought he’d hop aboard the rocket himself and ride it all the way, whooping and hollering like the crazy commander in Dr Strangelove.  With a gravitas of which any NHS matron would be proud, he recorded a solemn You Tube video, challenging the Scottish Government to come clean on cancelled operations being four times more frequent than in England.

Unfortunately, the pesky thing about information is that it comes in the form of words and numbers, and if you don’t understand those you’re knackered.  It soon became clear that Jim wasn’t comparing like with like, and that if you stripped out cancellations for medical imperatives, clinical reasons, weather and patients getting cold feet (by either changing their minds or popping their clogs), the Scottish and English figures were pretty much the same.  As SLab’s rocket exploded in a cloudburst way up high, it was Jim’s shredded credibility that rained down on a bemused public, in tiny angel-hair streamers of drivel.

It was hard to say which of Jim and the YouTube video was quicker to disappear from view, since both vanished within a timespan measurable only by Stephen Hawking.  The following day’s music-facing duties were palmed off on Health spokesperson Jenny Marra, the party’s specialist at standing in front of a disintegrating wreck spouting nonsense. 

The whole mess was the SNP’s fault, she maintained, for not initially publishing the figures themselves, forcing Labour to do all the hard sums.  Presumably if they had published the figures she’d have been complaining about the lack of easy-to-follow diagrams, or bright colours, or a primary school teacher to help them when they got stuck.  “Sorry” doesn’t seem to be part of Labour’s vocabulary, which is odd, since it comes between “Socialism” and “SOS”, which kinda sums up the party’s current position.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to get inside Jim Murphy’s head, because the echoes and sense of solitude would drive most people insane.  But it’s legitimate to wonder what his game is.  Has he given up on the 2015 General Election, like a football manager deciding relegation is inevitable? Is he now experimenting wildly for the future, in case one of his crackpot theories actually works?  Perhaps he represents spin doctor John McTernan’s revenge on Ed Miliband for not being Tony Blair?  Could he simply be - whisper it - a total, unmitigated numpty?

Or maybe, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the simplest explanation’s the most likely.  The guy’s permanently off his tits on Irn Bru.

29 comments:

  1. His monotone voice doesn't even change while he's swearing

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    1. Bet it did when he told Pete Wishart to 'Fuck off!, fuck off!'.

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  2. Murphy's Law? If it can go wrong, itt will.

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  3. Murphy's Law? If it can go wrong, itt will.

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  4. It's weird, isn't it? I mean, on the surface it looks like Murphy and his gaggle of wind-up merchants are just incompetent idiots, flailing wildly to try and find a way of stopping the SNP surge, and failing badly. But the media are so CONVINCED that he's playing a clever game that you can't help wondering if there's some cunning tactic you're missing.

    I think he's maybe just trying to disprove the theory that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

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  5. a really good read, thank you for that

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  6. "visions of Jackie Baillie holding me down while Iain Gray tries to saw off my leg, only to realise halfway through that it’s his own."

    I have just realised you can't read and drink hot tea at the same time without there being consequences.

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    1. Line of the week. Tears of laughter. Thank you Mr D. You do a body good.

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  7. The sad thing is if Labour really see someone like me who works for min wage and who played rugby as a kid in N Lanarkshire going to the rugby and having a pint after a hard week of work as middle class it shows how bad a place I must live in.

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  8. Bravo William! The line about Murphy wantonly heidbutting bykes is absolute genius. A comparison is valid. Long, skinny, annoying, always a sting in their wake and naebdy likes them.

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  9. Bravo William! The line about Murphy wantonly heidbutting bykes is absolute genius. There is also a valid comparison there. Long, skinny, annoying, always a sting in their wake and naebdy likes them.

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  10. Class William.
    Pure class...

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  11. Thank you for this seriously funny blog, which I have just stumbled upon. Jim Murphy appears to be doing a Maggie Thatcher, and using Altzheimer's as a hobby, before getting seriously entrenched in mental health issues. Somebody should take him to the doctor. He must have private health insurance.

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  12. Och, jeez, huvnae laughed so much for ages. Wondrous writing, William

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  13. Your laugh out loud moments are complimented nicely by the accuracy of yours facts maybe you should give Murphy some tips.

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  14. "...horrifying visions of Jackie Baillie holding me down while Iain Gray tries to saw off my leg, only to realise halfway through that it’s his own."

    Thanks for your great blog, your wordsmanship, such as the quote above, make me laugh outloud. But more importantly, you're addressing serious issues. There's no need to be all po-faced about it, sometimes humour gets the point across better.

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  15. Brilliantly written, amusing and very accurate!

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  16. "...horrifying visions of Jackie Baillie holding me down..." Seriously scary thought!

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  17. thanks, excellent article. I do think J M really was led to think his mission would win the day, put the jocks off politics of any kind for good, good god! What do they make of him Sowff of the border though? He might be successful in making Scottish politics look damned inadequate, but, they hadn't reckoned on Nicola Sturgeon popping up and making him look an utter fool.

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  18. Thank you. What a delightful piece of writing. I have you bookmarked now.

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  19. This is absolutely excellent stuff, William, thank you. Rev Stu is right: The National, sign this man!

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  20. If I was threatened with having Jackie Baillie holding me down(or coming anywhere near me) I'd cut my own feckin' leg off.Then beat her about the coupon w' it.

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  21. First time visitor.

    Will be back and as your commenters note the facts with a laugh. This is what the YES movement brought. Thanks for the read

    Labour and Murphy are doing their best to break up debates as the hole in ALL their policies will show. Just like the referendum. But we have learned a few lessons since. No more BS from SLAB. We don't believe you any more.

    :)


    :)

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  22. Hilarious. Thanks for a decent good laugh.Have you thought about taking a show around the comedy circuit?

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  23. Hilarious. Thanks for the really good laugh. Honest effective journalism.

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  24. The problem with Scottish labour isn't murphy. Lamont pretty much showed what the problem was, and it was all too obvious that Murphy was going to compound the problem, not fix it.

    The problem is simply that Scottish labour are shit.

    They are the living embodiment of a middle management culture disconnected from the higher & lower rungs of the organisation they belong to. Best described as the Dilbert principle. Scott Adams the author of Dilbert described the process as "leaderships way of removing morons from the productive flow" The fatal error of UK labour was not to appreciate that the longer devolution ran, they were going to have put capable people in charge. Not stack holyrood clear up to the rafters with shit.

    The month long series of gaffes, shows this middle management mindset is in full flow. No one able to mitigate the stupidity from below, and no clear direction from above. Scottish labour has filled its rank and file with clueless yes men, and UK party leadership doesn't feel like it should get involved.

    One way to fix it, would be for the entire party to resign and for its ranks to be replenished from the communities that it has failed for so long. How likely is that? Lets put it this way, Miliband has better chance of being elected as PM in may.

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  25. Belated brill. from me. Been busy of late.

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