Wardog and the Misunderstanding of New Labour Voters

With a paucity of corruption stories or stories of Footballers sleeping around, the red top tabloids seem to have trained (much to the joy of their “up-market” cousins) on the blogosphere, with the two targets to fall in recent weeks being the “Wardog” blog and a blog called “Universatility of Cheese”.

Obviously there was a link to the “Wardog” blog, and “Wardog” (or Bruce Newlands) was a follower of this blog. I read his blog a couple of times, it was ok. I did miss the uber-controversial post though where he took umbrage at Jim Murphy’s manners, having been floored with the cold a couple of weeks ago.

What I did notice on Bruces blog though was a certain frustration, definitely anger, towards New Labour supporters. Wardog did say that these people get the MP that they deserve, which kinda struck me as slightly petulant, and more worryingly, ignorant of the New Labour spin machine.

One of the reasons I pinpointed about the SNP’s failure in Glasgow North East was their failure to play the New Labour spin. This is seen today in the Paisley Express where Wendy Alexander once again play’s the GARL card…

“Another Early Christmas present for Renfrewshire would be the re-instatement of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link which would bring 1300 much needed local jobs. I am delighted that Scotland’s to six business organisations are backing the the campaign to build the link”

Yes, this is a newspaper column, so I would expect letters asking Alexander how she would pay for GARL, and wondering how this could be paid for in the middle of the worst recession… ever. A recession made by her big pal Iron Broon.

This is an example of the drip drip effect happening. If this is being printed in Paisley, one wonders what the effect is in other parts of the Central belt where New Labour has an almost mafia like presence. The effect of this drip drip effect was seen in Glasgow North West a couple of weeks ago, and the SNP did nothing effective. As a result many people believe that Glasgow was ripped off, that “their” money is being diverted to better off people. Their votes went to the non local candidate as a result.

In the 1990’s when faced with an overwhelmingly anti Labour press, Blair, Campbell,Brown and Mandleson decided on tactics to get favourable press. As a result, Campbell the enforcer was born. I’m not saying the SNP should copy New Labours spin tactics (though an equivilant to the “rapid rebuttal unit” wouldn’t go amiss). However, the parallels are there. A seemingly hostile press can be tamed.

One would like to think that once the distraction of the Independence Referendum abates, then Team Salmond will refocus on running Scotland, after all the chances of successfully piloting an Independence Referendum through this parliament are probably next to nil (and I have already posted about what Salmond should do next… ). What is certain is that for team SNP, November 2009 will not be looked back with any relish. The New Labour fight back has begun.