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In reply to the discussion: Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, London Mayoral, Local Government and PCC elections [View all]Denzil_DC
(7,233 posts)The previous Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael (a Lib Dem), tried to stitch up Sturgeon just before the general election by authorizing the leak of a memo claiming she'd told the French Ambassador that she didn't rate Miliband and would prefer a Tory government. This was based on a mysterious and disjointed third-hand account of their discussions that reads like a cut 'n' shut. The story fell apart within hours, with the French Ambassador and all others who'd been at the meeting denying point blank that she'd said any such thing, and no minute supporting the allegation. Otherwise, that election might have gone quite differently. As it was, some in Labour and the Lib Dems up here cling to the idea that the memo was accurate to this day, despite all the evidence against it. I like you enough to implore you: Don't be like them!
The idea that Sturgeon would be so stupid as to hand Cameron and the hostile Westminster civil service a loaded gun like that by entering into covert deals with the Tories just isn't credible. (Cameron, on the other hand, might just be stupid enough, but that's by the by ...).
Or do you think they've been meeting on their own in disguise at Knutsford Services under cover of darkness?
Sturgeon's savvy enough to try to keep things civil with adversaries, that's all. It doesn't mean there's any love lost, and it's what we pay her for. Somebody has to try to behave like an adult. If you're seeing parallels with the US political situation in recent years, you're not alone ...
Cameron and the Tory media (well, pretty much all the media, sadly) can only frighten people with the SNP as long as good people allow him to manipulate them, and as long as the other parties play along with him for their own reasons. The ridiculous slurs on what have been by all accounts a pretty decent intake of SNP MPs (even Labour MPs have acknowledged this, along with the uselessness of the Scottish Labour time-servers they replaced) should have faded by now if we're relying on evidence rather than prejudice. Fool me once, and all that.