"She wore a blue collar..."

Every politician has their schtick, their story. Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson's, is that she is a ‘good, old-fashioned’ working-class Conservative, seasoned with a good pinch of socially liberal, unstarchy modernity.

As Peter Ross' Times profile puts it this morning, "Ms Davidson grew up in two traditional small towns, Selkirk and Lundin Links. She went to Buckhaven High and lacks silver spoons and old school ties." And there is clearly a good deal of truth to this. Davidson is not one of the born to rule brigade. She seems amiable, ordinary and doesn't take herself too seriously. She wasn't privately educated. Flattering profiles tend to describe her as a "champion of blue collar Tories" - which is just an Americanised way of saying - working class Tories. 

And yet the foundations of all this remain remarkable shaky. Bark at Ms Davidson that the Scottish Tories remain a party devoted to the service of the wealthy, of established privilege and property, and she'll almost inevitably dip into her biography rather than her policy catalogue to try to refute the point. The election campaign represents an admirable opportunity for Ms Davidson to move beyond an immature identity politics, and to produce some policy calculated to benefit the workers of "middle Scotland" who she says uniquely preoccupy her.

But thus far? All we've really seen is the same old, same old. Her education agenda seems authentically felt. But on tax and spend? Recent developments in SNP policy have represented a calculated provocation to Davidson’s party. And damagingly, if she wanted to prosecute a consistent blue collar agenda for her party, her troops are proving either indisciplined or ill-led. Mr Osborne’s upper rate tax cut, cancelled. Local taxation, hiked on the Georgian villas of the New Town and the corniced apartments of Pollokshields and Kelvinside. Threats and menaces continue about the additional rate of taxation. 

Each provocation has been met with the same old unreconstructed response on behalf of interests Tories have long represented: the high earners, the landowners, the large homeowners, the prosperous middle classes. And for the real “middle Scotland” – squeezed or unsqueezed, delete as preferred? For "aspirational" folks, taking home between £20,000 and £30,000 a year, and hoping to bump up their salaries over the coming years? Next to sod all, as far as I can see. Certainly nothing distinctive from what the more traditionally patrician leadership of her party in Westminster has come up with.

We await the party manifestos for May's elections with interest. But we're gradually getting a clearer picture of where the parties will stand on key issues, including taxation. And if the speech Ms Davidson gave this morning is anything to go by, beyond the warm words and the attractive biographical annotations, Ms Davidson seems most exercised by the pocketbooks of the richest 5% to 10% of Scots. Here's the key section of her speech: 

Last week, we learned the full cost of the SNP’s plans. Firstly, middle earners in Scotland will be forced to pay £3000 more in tax than people in England over the next five years. By the turn of the decade, the difference in take home pay for someone touching£50,000 will be £800 a year. And secondly, the additional rate may go up too. On Wednesday, the First Minister rightly declared she would not be increasing the additional rate of tax – because we know Scotland will lose money if she does. But by Thursday night, we learned that, actually, she’s had second thoughts – and that she may do so in future years. In short, we now have a Government which we know will make middle earners pay more – and which may make higher earners pay even more too.

We can discuss the merits of tax banding. We can have a meaningful debate about when the 40% banding ought to bite, and what the consequences of higher taxation at the upper and additional thresholds are likely to be. There was some good discussion below the line in last week's blog on this. But for all the Daily Mail's wishful thinking - which Ms Davidson appears to have swallowed whole someone earning £50,000 is not a middle earner.  

The point cannot be underscored often enough. The median full time income in this country is £27,000 a year. Someone earning £50k a year may sit midway between the very rich and the very poor in our society, but most working people do not. In Ms Davidson's Edinburgh region, the median salary is higher - £35,784 - but still well short of the figure £50k figure she cites in her speech today.

If this is Ms Davidson's definition of a "blue collar" Tory, good luck finding many of those outside of Edinburgh's more prosperous enclaves. In fairness, you can understand the politics of this. Ms Davidson has a core vote to whom she must also tend. The Conservative Party - like all big, governing coalitions - has competing forces and inclinations within it. I'm sure Davidson is sincere - in a fuzzy way - about wanting to give a leg up to those who begin life with few advantages. But if your main policy objectives are to protect those who are already well off? If you offer sod all to those you claim to champion? If you claim you have a working class agenda, but all you talk about is protecting the pocketbooks of a relatively small minority of higher earners at the top? 

Then, to be honest, I don't give a fig whether you've pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, or whether you are the first person in your family to go to university. Your autobiography has become a convenient mask, to distract the people - and perhaps, to distract yourself - from the gulf separating your political ideals and the priorities you are actually pursuing. 

There was an interesting, human moment when Andrew Marr interviewed Iain Duncan Smith last weekend. The former Work and Pensions Secretary was confronted with the gap between his stated aspirations and what the government of which he had been part had actually achieved. Duncan Smith found his passion, defended his principles, and ultimately - failed credibly to bridge the gap between what he said he wanted to do, and what the record showed about his term in office. 

When pressed in a similar way, Ms Davidson has also got into the habit of retreating into her personal story, just as Iain Duncan Smith retreated to his principles. The former Work and Pensions Secretary invites us to judge him, not on his failures and his achievements, but on his good intentions. In Ruth Davidson's empty "blue collar" Toryism, we can already almost hear the dull echo of the Quiet Man's aspirations, and his regrets.

"Straight talking, honest politics..."

A crib sheet can be a dangerous thing. Like the actor's prompt, they allow the harried speaker to cut corners and to maintain a superficial veneer of plausibility on an unfamiliar topic.

If you trust the person who has pulled them together for you, in their judgement and in their diligence, they can be gold -- just so long as nobody asks you too many searching or well-informed questions. But as everyone who has ever been obliged to mug up for an unfamiliar tutorial at short notice well understands, danger as well as security lurks behind these primers' superficially reassuring and well-honed lines and cues. 

Is this right? Up to date? Am I missing something important here? Like a rat in a pantry, such doubts can gnaw away at you, preying on your confidence, distracting you. And they ought to. You may well be peddling bullshit. Bullshit of the ripeness and heft we heard the sainted Jeremy Corbyn peddling on the Andrew Marr show this weekend. Against the charming backdrop of Brighton's cyan sea, Corbyn launched the first of what is likely to be a salvo of rhetorical exocets against the Scottish National Party. And Corbyn's comments were classic crib sheet work. Calmac, privatised. Scottish railways, privatised. Colleges, gutted. Local government funding, put to the sword. Much of this was straightforward fiction -- presumably pressed into the new leader's BBC briefing pack by Labour's Scottish operation. 

As any fule kno, the Calmac ferry routes are currently out to tender. No decision has been taken. To suggest otherwise is either an out-and-out lie, or a blunder born of cluelessness, indifference and slap-dash preparation. In Mr Corbyn's case, I'm still inclined to suspect a muddle rather than a fiddle. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Islington North MP has never contemplated UK constitutional politics in his puff. He couldn't give a ha’penny jizz about politics north of the Tweed. They've never troubled him before.

And now, Jezza is reduced to parroting attack lines written for him by someone else. It is pretty tawdry. He seems signally indifferent to Scotland. The concept of a united Ireland may stir his passions, but Corbyn seems listless and intellectually semi-detached on the question of our own united or disunited Kingdom. I don't hold this indifference against him. From his London borough, local politics and world affairs will have, understandably, seemed more pressing. But more is expected of the head that wears the crown. 

Today, his new shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, took to the conference stage in Brighton full of the same patter. In that gruesome, zombie phrase, McDonnell argued that Scots should "come home to Labour", which he suggested "is now the only anti-austerity party". All of which, to coin another phrase, seems pretty chuffing rich. Get back to us, John, when you can coax a few more of your colleagues into the Westminster lobbies actually to oppose the Welfare Reform Bill. You talk of a grassroots anti-austerity movement. Wouldn't it be spiffy if your green benches actually showed any enthusiasm for that cause? Are you seriously contending that only the views of your isolated, embattled and increasingly compromised Labour party leadership matters here? Forget the glum Commons faces, and the missing dissents? Spare me. But back to the boats. 

The Scottish Government is obliged to tender ferry routes under European Union law. To fail to do so would be to expose the Government to enforcement action from the European Commission. If Derek Mackay took to his pins in the Scottish Parliament, and gave a categorical pledge that the tendering process was a sham, and Calmac were guaranteed to win the contract providing link shipping to many of Scotland's islands, Calmac's competitors would drag Mackay off to an expensive and impossible to defend judicial review, almost certainly dooming Calmac's commercial bid for the contract. That may sit uncomfortably alongside the "save Calmac" agitpop, the hashtagging and the twibboning, but it is the law. Such is the price of the single market and European competition. 

Corbyn's case for the prosecution on railways is even more tenuous. He told Andrew Marr that the perfidious Nationalists "were behind privatisation of Scot Rail." Which is also straightforwardly untrue. As trainspotters everywhere know, the Railways Act of 1993 was the key instrument which enabled the UK government to distribute rail assets back into the private sector. At worst, Corbyn might indict the SNP government for failing to foster a public sector bid for the rail franchise, ultimately won by the Dutch company, Abellio. This is a long-standing charge which has been launched by Scottish Labour at Nicola Sturgeon's government for some months now. But there is crucial missing context here which dynamites the glib, schoolboy indictment the new leader guilelessly read out on Marr on Sunday.

A cursory inspection of the Scotland Act reveals - shock horror - that the "provision and regulation of railway services" is a reserved matter under Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998. If you burrow down into the new Scotland Bill, you'll find a new clause 49, which makes it clear that the general reservation "does not prevent a public sector operator from being a franchisee in relation to a Scottish franchise agreement." Significantly, the topic was altogether missing from Scottish Labour's Smith Commission submission back in 2014, despite their noises-off grousing. But these changes aren't yet on the statute book. Legally, Holyrood cannot pass legislation which "relates to reserved matters". The courts could and would reduce any such legislation to ashes. 

The Scottish Parliament's powers are trussed up and limited by the devolution legislation. We may wish it were otherwise. We may wish that the Scottish Government had more autonomy over transport policy, and much else. But to indict the Nats for failing to do something which the law - passed by Westminster - says they cannot do? That's the politics of the playground. It is not, in today's Labour Conference's all too worthy slogan, "straight talking" or "honest politics". 

I have considerable sympathy with some of Mr Corbyn's views, and very little with some others. Nevertheless, I feel a twinge of instinctive - if paradoxical - protectiveness towards the party, watching the likes of John McTernan on BBC Daily Politics today, being granted a bully pulpit, almost entirely unchallenged, to crucify, flay and savage the leadership of his own party. It is grim.

By all means, challenge the Scottish Government. Question its performance. Advance different priorities. Name hypocrisy and backsliding and caution when you see it. Show me the soul who believes that any government leaves behind it a perfect record, and I'll show you a fool. But for crivven's sake, Jeremy, my rumpled companion, my bearded, tieless fellow traveller - take a little time to cast a critical eye over the gormless cribs elbowed your way by your comrades in arms. The snark is rising. 

♫ We're the Jury! Dread our fury! ♫

Another Sunday, another Scottish Roundup. A rather gin-soaked, hungover & generally belated effort composed by yours truly this week, aptly entitled "Spewings and ratings of very drunk people late at night". This, after the recent remarks made by Smug Jug Lugs at the Cheltenham Literature Festival - he moonlights under the quasi-professional title of Andrew Marr - adding to the seemingly bottomless cauldron of vitriol which the Unco' Press keep stoked and bubbling in fearful, loathing contemplation of the humble blogger.

Last week, I was writing about how the distinctiveness of Scots law rarely finds expression on the telly. This can lead to very real misunderstandings and uncertainties about such simple things as how many folk sit on Scottish juries, how the three possible verdicts open to them in criminal prosecutions interact with one another, how many jurors need to vote guilty for the accused to be convicted - and so on.  A few people have recently e-mailed me, asking for clarification on these points. If some are asking, others are undoubtedly wondering and keeping mum. Since we're able to say so little of substance or interest about the ongoing Sheridan trial - I thought the greatest service I can render is to turn the particular case to didactic use and clarify a few general points about juries in Scotland which might help folk to understand those proceedings better.

The Scottish civil jury is a curious beastie. The relevant piece of legislation is the Court of Session Act 1988. Civil juries are only able to try a limited list of actions, the most prominent of which being damages for personal injury - and defamation. By dint of section thirteen of the 1988 Act, a Scottish civil jury consists of 12 persons, the same number as sit on English criminal cases but three fewer than the 15 which sit in Scottish criminal cases. A civil jury reaches its verdict by simple majority. In the case of Sheridan v. News International, I think it may have slipped a number of people's minds that the final verdict was 7 votes to 4, one initially impanelled member of the jury being excused in the course of the trial.

This is in stark contrast with the voting rules which obtain in English cases. Historically - and in some jurisdictions influenced by the English model this is still the case - for the accused to be found guilty, the decision had to be unanimous. Twelve out of twelve English jurors had to vote guilty. Nowadays, that high formal standard has been relaxed - but only somewhat. This is the phenomenon of the majority verdict. Unlike the Scots civil jury, this a qualified majority and under the Juries Act of 1974,  generally requires ten of the twelve jurors to agree on a verdict. Anything less and the jury is hung and cannot return a verdict, guilty or not guilty.

There is no similar qualified majority rule in Scottish criminal procedure. Our fifteen-person criminal juries reach verdicts on a simple majority. Assuming all of the jurors last the course of the trial, this means that eight guilty votes are all that is needed to convict on any count. In the absence of a qualified majority rule,  unlike our retrying friends south of the Tweed, Scottish juries cannot be hung. If eight votes for guilty cannot be mustered in the jury room, the charge falls and the accused is simply acquitted.

One detail that almost everyone must know about Scots criminal trials is that they have three  potential verdicts - guilty, not guilty and not proven. So how do they interact? The answer is quite simple and is implied in the previous paragraph. Not proven and not guilty produce the same practical, acquitting consequences. The question is always did a majority of the jury vote to convict? As a result, it doesn't matter whether the seven dissenters in the minority break down 5-2 not proven or 4-3 not guilty.

To some, the contrast between Scots and English approaches will seem striking, the latter valuing jury consensus much more highly. Certainly, there's no denying that the Scottish procedure does make much more allowance for a very sharply divided jury - and nevertheless accepts the verdict of the slim majority. Traditional answers to objections on this front have tended to emphasise other procedural safeguards, including the corroboration rule that requires the prosecution lead a sufficiency of evidence against the accused. In England, such rules don't hold. When making comparisons, we might also reflect that an English jury reaching a qualified majority guilty verdict, compared to their Scots equivalents, only really needs a couple more folk to convict, 10/12 votes as compared to 8/15. The real difference in ethos doesn't seem to be concerned with the number of jurors convinced of the accused's guilt,  so much as how many entertain doubts. While the English and Welsh procedure is satisfied leaving no more than two jurors unconvinced, we Scots are willing to dispense with the dubieties of five more doubters and send the accused off the Chokey, despite them.