Godwin's Law

macnumpty · Godwin's Law

Angus Robertson has been chosen as the new Leader of the SNP Group at Westminster. Alex Salmond is still an MP, but he has bigger fish to fry being First Minister. And Robertson's first job was to deal with a few choice remarks by the MP for East Lothian, Ann Moffat, whose love of devolution and the Scottish Parliament is such that she once called for powers to be retracted from Holyrood.

Today she turned her attention on PR, and you can see why she's peeved: without the 56 Additional Members provided by the List, Labour would have 37 Constituencies in a Parliament of 73: a majority of one. The fact that Labour would have come second would be quite irrelevant.

But in her attack on the system, she's gone for the "Hitler was elected by PR" line. If she'd said this online, a discussion on Godwin's Law would be triggered. I don't want to trigger it, but I do want to focus this bit: "proportional representation gave Germany Adolf Hitler and in Scotland to a lesser degree we've had the member for Banff and Buchan".

No, really, she said that. I'm speechless. Is she really comparing Alex Salmond with a man whose decisions were responsible for so much pain, suffering and death? I mean, I know that Labour predicted dire consequences for Scotland if the SNP should get in, but a new Holocaust? A quest for Lebensraum?! Come on...

She might not like proportional representation, but that's no reason for her to lose her sense of proportion.

Rinty

She missed out that PR gave us 8 years of a Lab/Lib coalition that washed their hands of Iraq, Dungavel, Faslane and nuclear power.

It seems that to Anne Moffat, PR is a bad thing unless Labour win the election that it is fine.

Aventinian

I don't think the two have been compared, just mentioned as sharing similar characteristics.

Which is, of course, true. Both are human beings, for example... well, sort of.