LIKE A CAT THAT GOT THE CREAM.....

Just check out that smile! That is the smile of an ultra devious modern day Machiavelli whose cunning plan has just come through in spades. Ever since I tapped the ‘Publish’ button and sent my last blog winging off into the ether, I have been met with growing hostility by friends, colleagues and acquaintances in the ‘Better Together’ camp. These are people who are not really the getting angry type. And their anger is the kind that people tend to show when they are caught out in the act of doing something that is pretty damn embarrassing. To a man and woman, they are suddenly hugely ill at ease with the idea of being a part of ‘Team Osborne’. Having good old Bullingdon George step forward to become one of the main flag wavers for the Union was clearly not something they relished.

In my blog, I punted out the mischievous idea that our austere Chancellor is a closet supporter of the ‘Yes’ campaign. My gut feeling is that he would like nothing better than to see the back of Scotland and all who sail in her, most particularly those 41 safer than safer Labour seats.

This idea was met with a degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was also pretty well rubbished.

With the benefit of hindsight, I am willing to admit that I didn’t completely call his much trumpeted trip to Edinburgh to tell us the Pound isn’t ours after all. My instinct suggested to me that his master plan was to play the role of the Oxbridge educated Public School Boy to the hilt and thereby rub five million Scots up the wrong way.

Well the fruits of his crafty labour have now been measured. A Survation Poll commissioned by the Scottish Daily Mail has revealed that in the wake of his visit support for the ‘Yes’ campaign has jumped from 32% to 38% whilst the ‘Better Together’ numbers have taken a dive from 52% to 47%.

All of a sudden there is a mere 9% in the thing and the momentum is all rolling in one direction.

So.

In football commentator speak….The boy done great.

Job done.

With a single ride up and down on a train George has delivered a Stalingrad moment to the Unionist camp. I guess that in 50 years time history books will identify this as the moment when the tide turned.

…..Up until Osborne’s fateful trip to Edinburgh it seemed like that the Scots might well have voted to stay in the Union. After his visit, the ‘Yes’ campaign became unstoppable….

Can you picture it? I certainly can.

The same poll showed that a mere third of Scots believed a word he said. Two thirds bought into Alex Salmond’s assessment that the Chancellor was bluffing. Nice work George. For the next few months every poor sod who has signed up to fight the ‘Better Together’ campaign will have to constantly defend your words. Of course George wasn’t bluffing! He would never do that. George is a great guy…..

Oh they’re going to really love that…….

With one deftly arrogant speech he presented Alex Salmond with an open goal and the First Minister duly smacked the ball into the back of the net. The Scots hate being pushed around by aristocratic types from London. Let’s face it, this is hardly a new thing. The English haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory down the years when their armies have marched north from Carlisle. When blue blooded Englishmen come north to boss them around, the Scots look for one of their own to stand up and shout ‘Away and shite’ from the rooftops.

Hindsight however has revealed new and even more devious layers to George’s cunning plan. Not only did he deliver an 11 point swing to the ‘Yes’ campaign, he also gave the Labour Party a pretty severe kick in the nether regions. Basically, he carefully walked the Right Honourable Ed Balls to the end of a plank and pushed him off into the abyss. He put Balls firmly between a rock and a hard place. Was Ed to come out and contradict the rest of the ‘Better Together’ campaign by suggesting that in his opinion it would be fine and dandy for an Independent Scotland to share the pound? Or was he to step forward to rubber stamp the world according to George and thereby make himself look like a nodding dog in the back window of the Chancellor’s Bentley?

It’s call lose, lose Ed.

And you just lost.

 

Big time.

Johaan Lamont, the Labour leader up here in Scotland saw the writing on the wall as soon as George had finished with his spray can. With a mind boggling lack of judgement, she picked up the phone to the Scottish Daily Mail of all places and told them that Labour ‘had inflicted severe damage on itself by aligning itself with Osborne’

And thus another open goal was presented to King Alex. Whack. Two nil.

So there we are. There are still eight months to go and the gap is already down to nine points. After Field Marshall Von Paulus surrendered the German 6^th Army at Stalingrad in early 1943, the war didn’t end. Instead it ground on for another two and a half hellish years. But after Stalingrad the result was never remotely in doubt. George has just manipulated his very own Stalingrad moment for the ‘Better Together’ campaign. Now all that is left is the long and agonising retreat all the way back from the banks of the Volga to the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.

No wonder you’re smiling George…..