STRONG AND STABLE, STRONG AND STABLE, STR….

OK. So according to Dean, the Daily Express and even some of the real press along with the BBC, the Tories won a victory on Thursday, and Scotland said no to independence, presumably preferring to be “strong and stable” with Brexit May and her chaotic bunch of clueless ministers. (Any bets on who will have to go after her election win?)

But, to be fair, the Tories did very well by their standards in Scotland. Since the days of Thatcher, they have been poison here. Playing down the “Conservative” name, the utter chaos of the Labour Party (for which the priority seems to be internecine warfare and voting along with whatever the government comes up with) and failing to talk about any actual policies except SNP BAAAAAD, have played well for them.

 

They made the election about the Union and about being “strong and stable”, whatever that actually means. (Seriously does anyone see Theresa May as being either strong or stable, or indeed anything other than a rather silly woman who sells weapons to Saudi, while ranting that NT left “Easter” out of their egg competition?) They made it about visceral hatred of the SNP, of independence, of the Greens, of Scotland as anything other than a region… So much so that none of us has any idea what their policies for local government are, although I’m pretty sure we can guess. As they don’t actually control any councils, at least we are sure that whatever they stand for will be tempered by decency and humanity.

And to an extent, it worked for them.

 

But the truth, of course, is that the SNP had a great night.

Here’s what you need to know.

1.  The SNP won the election nationally, with the largest number of councillors and the highest vote share of any party.

2.  They’ve won more councillors, with 431 elected compared to 425 in 2012.

3.  The SNP is now the largest group in 16 of 32 councils.

4.  The SNP has ended almost 40 years of Labour control in Glasgow, becoming the largest party in the city for the first time.

5.  The SNP are now the largest party in Scotland’s four largest cities: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.

And so now we move to the general election which in England they will fight on “strong and stable” leadership as they come out of Europe leaving chaos in their wake. In Scotland, they will fight on a “strong and stable” leadership for the union.

I’m not expecting to hear much about how some police officers and nurses are reliant upon Food Banks to feed their families, the sale of the NHS to Virgin, Tory electoral fraud, 40,000 deaths caused by pollution, war in the Middle East, abysmal trains, potholed roads, reduced pension, rising prices, thousands of deaths as a result of corruption in ATOS and their likes, sanctions, black hole in the incompetent Defence Minister’s budget, Mrs May’s closest, well, only,  friends, Trump, Erdogan, Netanyahu, and Salman… etc, etc.

Oh dear, no.

Oh, and this is interesting…