Oh well, I got that forecast badly wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadly we now have a convicted felon leading perhaps the most disreputable cabinet in US history with a number of his picks facing allegations of sexual misbehaviour and the chaos already underway with Matt Gaetz withdrawing from the Attorney General pick. We were told that Team Trump had learned from the mistakes made in\u00a0cabinet selection from 2016 but it seems that they lied about that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, what\u2019s been done cannot be undone and we now face 4 more years of global chaos. It makes me glad that I am in the winter rather than spring of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But perhaps it\u2019s also a suitable point to pause and ask why progressive causes and Governments have fared so badly at the polls recently with Italy and France, soon to be joined perhaps by Germany, seeing another lurch to the right.\u00a0 The US economy was after all hailed by The Economist<\/a><\/strong> as being the envy of the world just weeks before voters threw the Democrats out so decisively claiming that the economy was their biggest worry!<\/p>\n\n\n\n No doubt the abject failure of Biden\u2019s Presidency to constantly highlight the growing strength of the economy was a problem, just as the MAGA constant messaging that it was a disaster obviously hit home. No doubt either, that the border was an issue too and the Democrat failure to drive home his impact on sinking the harshest border deal was a factor. But populism doesn\u2019t rely on facts or logic it\u2019s driven by emotions, fear and grievance and the fact that the headline economy was good didn\u2019t change the fact that millions of Americans felt<\/em> poorer<\/p>\n\n\n\n One other factor which has been receiving a fair bit of coverage across not just the US elections but globally is the impact of so called \u201cculture wars\u201d. Anthony Scaramucci said on a podcast recently something to the effect that Democrats had a meme where a daughter asks her mother \u201cWho are you voting for?\u201d and Mum replies \u201cFor you\u201d highlighting the women\u2019s rights issues. He says though, that the reality was women saying to their sons \u201cI\u2019m voting for you\u201d because the right wing really cut through on gender worries. Whether on the lies they told about boys going to school and coming home girls or real concerns about biological boys and men playing girls\u2019 or women\u2019s sports this is an issue which touches nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like it or not, for most people this is an issue and it cost us just as it did the Democrats. For most people it\u2019s pretty simple; if you are born with a penis and testicles you are a boy. If you are born with a vagina then you are a girl. Of course there are people who are prisoners in the wrong body and for whom this rule doesn\u2019t work but changing the rules for everyone to accommodate this minority is not something the majority of people see as sensible or reasonable. Despite e.g. MSPs of every party voting for the GRA the tories under dross and their pals in the media made it into an anti SNP issue and it worked for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s clear from the General Election and subsequent by-elections that we have lost the trust and respect of many voters and that\u2019s very hard to recover, just ask the Labour or Tory parties. We were seen as a Government which was pretty boring and pragmatic but no longer. Senseless fights over issues which most voters did not support has cost us dear as has internal squabbling and back-stabbing and policies which were handled so badly. Why on earth Lorna Slater was given ministerial lead is something I will never understand! When the going got tough; the Greens got going and kept running. In truth could Humza not have manufactured a better end to the \u201ccoalition\u201d? We looked like a Party in chaos and that\u2019s not going to attract voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most important things in life as in politics is to know when and who to fight. We are never going to win in the UK Supreme Court and going there with policies which don\u2019t have popular support is even dafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill Clinton famously had the phrase \u201cIt\u2019s the economy stupid\u201d on his campaign walls but as we saw in the US it\u2019s not just the economy. It\u2019s how people feel about their everyday lives. Especially when you have an economy which depends on migrants and a population which doesn\u2019t want immigration. Just imagine the Health Service or hospitality without them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we do have a good story to tell but are not good at telling it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are we more secure in our homes and on the streets? Of course the crime figures over the term of the SNP Government show us that but when did we last tell people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are the NHS staffing numbers better,? The figures over the term of the SNP Government show us that but when did we last tell people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is Inward investment to Scotland higher? Of course, the figures show us that but when did we\u2026 you get the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to tell people what we\u2019ve done, what we\u2019re doing and what we\u2019re going to do for them and why. Not just once but constantly. Repetition is the key!<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a sense with some that if everything isn\u2019t perfect nothing can be good! We must ensure that, since perfection can never be achieved, we do not allow perfection to be the enemy of the good. There\u2019s much to be proud of in Scotland summed up in the acronym TABIS coined by Paul Lewis that Things Are Better In Scotland. Sure things could be better but in many cases they\u2019re the best in the UK. Sure if you are lucky enough to earn over \u00a331k you will pay \u00a328 a year extra in tax but you get a lot for that \u00a328. Let\u2019s start telling our good story and challenge the professional doom-mongers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh well, I got that forecast badly wrong. Sadly we now have a convicted felon leading perhaps the most disreputable cabinet in US history with a number of his picks facing allegations of sexual misbehaviour and the chaos already underway with Matt Gaetz withdrawing from the Attorney General pick. We were told that Team Trump had learned from the mistakes made in\u00a0cabinet selection from 2016 but it seems that they lied about that too. However, what\u2019s been done cannot be undone and we now face 4 more years of global chaos. It makes me glad that I am in the winter rather than spring ofRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3726,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions\/3726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}