It’s a bit rich for Diane Abbott to complain about “expropriating” money from Londoners to spend on the Scots

Pork Barrel enthusiast

Labour desperately needs supporters who’ve decamped to the SNP to return to the reservation in time for the general election in May, or the party and its “leader” are going to go very nicely with butter and marmalade. Jim Murphy, the recently elected leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and his bosses in London have obviously spent a lot of time thinking hard about how to lure disaffected jocks back into the fold – and they’ve come up with a brilliant wheeze: promise to give them lots of other people’s money! The bribe has been couched in terms of stealing money from rich southerners via the mansion tax and handing it to Scottish voters in the form of lots of extra NHS nurses. But that doesn’t matter – it’s the principle that counts.

The special needs London Labour MP, Diane Abbott – who presumably got her job thanks to some left-wing affirmative action programme or other – has taken exception to Mr. Murphy resorting to bribery. She has complained that this amounts to a promise to “extort” money from Londoners in order to “buy” Scottish votes.  Of course – possibly for the first time in her life – her criticism is spot on. But hold on a minute, Tubs… taking money from the people to whom it belongs and handing it to people to whom it definitely doesn’t in return for their vote is surely the Labour Party’s entire raison d'être. In fact, it now appears to be the raison d'être of all main political parties – the difference being that Labour takes even more of our money away and hands it to even less deserving people than the others do, and then, because bribery and power are addictive, borrows vast extra sums (which future generations will have to repay) in order to keep themselves in office.

One presumes that Ms Abbott’s central objection to Jim Murphy’s enthusiasm for redistributing other people’s money is that it won’t be available to bribe the pet victim groups whose votes will help the chubster MP retain her capacious Hackney North and Stoke Newington seat in May. That’s the problem with relying on the politics of envy, resentment and victimhood – occasionally the needs of one bunch of anointed “victims” will outweigh those of a rival group: after all, life is as much about competition as co-operation, no matter what utopian egalitarians tell us.

But of course, there’s another reason for Diane Abbott’s intervention. Let’s face it, the rainbow coalition of ethnic voters in her constituency aren’t going to be switching sides any time soon, whether or not she keeps delivering pork from the taxpayer barrel. I presume what motivated today’s internecine intervention was the need to demonstrate to Londoners - especially the dwindling number who aren’t of an ethnic persuasion – that she has the whole of the city’s interests at heart ahead of her attempt to become Mayor: I have a feeling her ethnic supporters may find themselves on the back burner for a bit as their glorious leader desperately “reaches out” to members of the indigenous population. Good luck with that, Diane!

The most amusing sentence uttered during today’s little spat between political southpaws was this one from Jim Murphy: "The way in which the UK works, as we all know, is about pooling and sharing our resources." Far as I can see, Jim, it’s us lot down here who are called on to fill the pool, while your lot get to drain it.  Or will that earn me a visit from Police Scotland?