Foote in Mouth

Giant_Haystacks_1

Alan Cochrane – saviour of the Union

By Mike Small

It’s a sad day when someone inadvertently puts one of their own to the sword. But that dear readers is the position this grey morning.

Yesterday was full of fevered speculation about who wrote ‘the Vow’. It’s become up there with Shergar, Lord Lucan and the Crystal Skulls. It seemed that, for whatever reasons, the author felt no pride in their historic wheeze. So we plodded on in sublime ignorance, and out of boredom and some kind of purgative duty began leafing Alan Cochrane’s splenetic ‘Alex Salmond: My part in his downfall’.

This was a task we thought unnecessary after the cautiously brutal review by Kenneth Roy in the Scottish Review. Reading it you are caught between admiration for the writers wonderful indiscretion about the Scottish media and a prose style that is like Giant Haystacks ghost-writing a new Enid Blyton series. The whole book is like a map of the inner circles of the Labour-Tory media political elite as they connive to hold sway on the body politic with endless networking, rumours and backstabbing. One reviewer says: “Cochrane reveals the truth about how the UK was won, offering biting analysis, telling detail and often trenchant wit.”

But one gem pops up on p. 312 amongst the ‘lashings of Monople champagne’ venison and vitriol:

16 September

The day of the Vow. Amazing front-page declaration in the Record from all three party leaders, signing up to deliver a solemn promise that they would grant Scotland massive extra powers AND keep the Barnett Formula. Gordon Brown is getting all the credit for making sure this was done, but I hear that the man responsible was Murray Foote, the Record’s editor. He is a brilliant tabloid operator and has made the Record one of the most intelligent red tops around – taking it back to the way it was thirty years ago, before it was ruined by a bunch of nonentities who made it a joke.

It was Murray who invented the concept of the Vow and put all their signatures on what looked like vellum on a ‘poster’ front page. It was pure journalistic hokum. Still, it has become a sort of second Magna Carta. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t being taken so seriously. Great stroke and put it one ahead of The Sun, which, since its no longer backing the Nats, looks absolutely crap.

It’s a beautiful extract, rich in insight.

You’ve got to love the notion of the ‘second Magna Carta’ and the Record as ‘one of the most intelligent red tops around’. Perhaps a low bar? But which wise and cunning editor wouldn’t lay claim to the second Magna Carta?

 

Comments (17)

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  1. Allan Borwick says:

    In a twitter convo with him, he said he had the email address of the person who sent the vow to him for publication but obviously wouldnt divulge it. Probably he sent it to himself.

  2. Richard Harris says:

    Quacks like a duck, talks like a duck, waddles like … a Foote…

    Its a Murray Mallard.

  3. If there were more than two wrapped in the embrace of mutual admiration, you’d call it a circle jerk.
    But without the circle, it’s just two jerks.

  4. David Agnew says:

    Who wouldn’t take credit for a 2nd Magna Carta? The man who knows it was utter bullshit to begin with.
    This tissue of lies is what led to the “iron timetable” and ultimately led to the Smith Commission. The unionist parties decided to be petty petulant and pugnacious pricks about it, and more or less killed it dead.

    It hasn’t stopped that Carmichael wasting tax payers money saying the vow has delivered….nothing of consequence as it hasn’t even been passed in parliament yet. One can understand why Foote is so keen to distance himself from it all.

    The vow is the Streisand effect writ large and is now a runaway train that is wrecking the unionist parties prospects in Scotland. If the unionist parties had any sense they would have made sure real powers where on offer. The biggest culprits in ensuring these powers were off the table, was the labour party. The real culprit for the current foaming mouthed anti-Scottish bile was Cameron’s spanner in the works – EVEL.
    That cretin ensured that there was no way the commissions proposals would ever pass into law. Miliband will not sign off on EVEL as it kills his precious “one nation labour” vision. The only way to protect it would be to ensure nothing in the smith commission got passed into law – probably not even that power over traffic signs.

    The SNP are now surging ahead and no one in Westminster seems capable of connecting the dots. So instead they are projecting their failure to win a majority in England onto Scotland. Claiming that we as an electorate will impose an disastrous coalition onto the rUK. Tories claim it will be labour who will make the deal. Labour claim that it will be the Tories. The MSM have been relentlessly attacking labour though, not the Tories. Demanding that labour rule out any deal with the SNP.

    The reason is simple enough. They know that Scotland has since the 70s favoured the labour party. Not the conservatives. They know it makes sense for the SNP to support labour and the UK party knows it would make perfect sense to make a deal with the SNP. The Scottish labour party are in full frothing “hate SNP” mode and are claiming it would let in the Tories. This is flying in the face of the relentless narrative appearing in every major UK newspaper. Picked up by the usual suspects in the pro UK blogosphere and repeated ad nauseam.

    On some level the Scottish labour party is aware of whats coming and increasingly they are urging labour voters to vote for Tories, if the Tory has a better chance of winning. Thats right the party of the people, who claim only they can keep the Tories out are asking folk to vote Tory – while continually telling them that those nasty separatists voting SNP vote are also voting Tory.

    Someone somewhere hasn’t thought this through.

    All this because someone made some shit up in a newspaper?

    Yes Mr Cochrane – absolutely hilarious.

  5. scot2go2 says:

    This is not particularly relevant to this blog… but its about manipulation of the media to conjure up an image that is basically deceitful…. and Im referring to the milliband kitchen photographs…. when they were given to the media, they seemed to suggest that he & his barrister wife … living in a property worth millions….. were sipping tea in a small galley type kitchen…. all was normal… yet….. another female journalist who had interviewed ed’s wife some two years ago had been very impressed with their palatial designer kitchen… which was most certainly not the one seen in the distributed picture handed out by the labour parties press office….
    It now has been reported that the ” scullery/utility room ” is where the catering staff brought in for dinner parties…. use whilst the elite diners are contemplating the Uk’s future…

  6. carandol says:

    🙂 democratic process as a tool of self interest ….. and they don’t see it as either perverse or treasonous…….. M E N T A L

  7. Dan Huil says:

    I wonder if the ever-so-clever Mr Cochrane predicted the surge in SNP support after the referendum. Just whose Downfall is it now?

  8. Donald Mitchell says:

    Speaking of “The Vow”, has anyone seen “The Keeper” thereof recently? The silence of The Gord is postively deafening in this election campaign. Will His Britishness fight or has he abandoned his party fo the fate they so richly deserve?

  9. A cunning stunt from a stunning *****

  10. Gordie says:

    Murray Foote will go down amongst his fellow Scots as a liar and an agent of the British state. He might even get wee footnote in a history book or two. I hope that happens. It will stand as a reminder for future generations of the role he and his quisling rag played in the first referendum on Independence, He can look to the money, opportunities and preferences that this particular state has always bestowed upon those who put British interest ahead of the rights and interests of their homeland.

  11. oldbattle says:

    Cochrane is the archetypal golf club bore: arrogant, boring and THICK!

  12. seanair says:

    Donald Mitchell
    Having “come to the rescue” of the good folk of Kirkcaldy facing the demise of the Tesco store in that town–wait a minute Tesco are going to shut it after all, I hope that the clunking fist has realised that he is yesterday’s man and and we will hear no more from him.

    1. fehvepehs says:

      It’s a pity the big clunking fist didn’t come to the rescue of all the wee shops (family businesses) that closed when Tesco opened up it’s doors. Yesterday’s man right enough.

  13. Steve Asaneilean says:

    Seems to me that the Vow stunt will come to haunt them.
    It promised that which ultimately cannot and will not be delivered.
    Have you noticed how quiet the Westminster parties have gone over the Smith Commission? It’s hardly featuring as an election issue. Proof, if any was needed, that it’s all fluff and no substance and the vast majority of the electorate have already seen through it in my view.
    It’s really not worth bothering about either anymore as come July the failure of both to deliver anything meaningful or substantial will become clear for all to see.

  14. Michael says:

    Foote is just another private schoolboy steeped in the culture of the cringe, determined to protect his class interests and what he imagines to be his place on one of the higher rungs of the provincial ladder. Up to now his constant meddling in Scottish politics has mostly benefitted those he seeks to harm. Keep it up, pal, you’re doing a great job.

  15. macart763 says:

    And neither Cochrane nor Foote see a problem with their conduct?

    Who knew?

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