Mark Coburn suggested tonight that Scottish Labour's Twitter account seemed to have been hacked, and I think I've spotted what he means. Even by the conventional McDougall standards of stupidity, this tweet is very, very stupid indeed...
"Salmond told people to vote against Labour in 2010 and the Tories ended up being the largest party."
Hmmm. The snag here is that Salmond may have given that advice (if "vote against Labour" can be considered a legitimate longhand version of his actual "vote SNP" message), but Scotland didn't take that advice. Labour got more than twice as many votes in Scotland as the SNP did. Result? Not only were the Tories the largest single party at Westminster by miles, but David Cameron was the new Prime Minister.
Now, to be fair, a minority of people (20%) did take Salmond's advice. But let's suppose every single person in Scotland had been a good little boy or girl, and had voted Labour in the way that nature intended. This is what the result would have been...
HYPOTHETICAL RESULT OF THE 2010 ELECTION IF EVERY SINGLE SCOT HAD VOTED LABOUR :
Conservatives 306
Labour 276
Liberal Democrats 46
Others 22
OVERALL MAJORITY FOR CONSERVATIVE-LIBERAL DEMOCRAT COALITION : 54 SEATS
So the Tories would have been the largest single party by a comfortable margin, and would have formed a coalition with the Lib Dems. Exactly the same as what actually did happen. This means, of course, that it was quite literally IMPOSSIBLE for anyone in Scotland to prevent David Cameron becoming Prime Minister, no matter how they voted.
Perhaps Labour could explain their theory of how Alex Salmond was personally responsible for the 2010 result in a little more depth? I'm sure we could all do with a laugh.
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