Rector's Cut

Students and staff at my alma mater, Edinburgh Uni, are soon heading to the polls to elect a new Rector to place Mark Ballard, the former Green MSP. The three candidates are Iain Macwhirter, the political commentator, George Galloway, the hardline Socialist gobshite, and Labour's all-purpose sock puppet, George Foulkes.

Now, Foulkes served under Clare Short in the Department for International Development, and didn't end up having a nervous breakdown. That's a real credit to his stamina and for that reason alone, he's earned his Peerage.

But despite that, I have zero respect for the man. The reason for that stems to Blair's 2003 Cabinet re-shuffle, when he abolished the post of Scotland Secretary, only to un-abolish it a few hours later. That Thursday, George went on BBC2 and admitted that it could have been handled better. Less than 24 hours later, on the same channel, George then waxed lyrical about what a wonderful re-shuffle it was. Clearly Alastair Campbell had activated the man's cybernetic implants, and Foulkes's brief moment of independent thought was over-ridden.

Anyway, back to the Rectorial Election. One of the reasons Ballard won was that the Students' Association broke with over a century of electoral neutrality and impartiality to attack rival candidate Boris Johnson, who as Tory Shadow Higher Education Minister had suggested that his party would no longer seek to reverse Labour's implementation of top-up fees. The main architect of this policy was the University Labour Club. Of course, this time they're backing a candidate who actually voted for top-up fees (Johnson didn't) so it will be interesting to see what line EUSA takes. In an ideal world, consistency would be the order of the day and student politicians would end up mandated to campaign against Foulkes. In the world of student politics, the events of 2006 will be quietly forgotten.

Mainly, this will be because the Foulkes campaign isn't actually about the Lord of Cumnock, but about his Party. So says Iain Gray. Now, theoretically, he's only Labour's Leader in the Scottish Parliament, but it seems that his voice carries some weight - which will no doubt be a surprise to Jim Murphy, but there you go.

Anyway. Tory Bear understands that Iain Gray has intervened in the campaign, maybe as it's dying on its feet on account of some key activists apparently not being a fan of the man, and being somewhat sceptical of his campaign.

TB reports that Gray took aside a reluctant member of the team and told him to get on board in no uncertain terms, such as: "It'd be a shame if you're career ended here" and "George is very important in Scotland, and he has a long memory..."!

When pressed, the Leader of the campaign stated, "I can categorically assure you that no one from within George's Rectorial campaign team has ever issued a threat to anyone." Which doesn't say anythng about anyone from outwith the campaign team, such as, for example, Iain Gray, whose mantra appears to be: "This isn't about George, or you, it's about the Labour Party".

So there we have it: Gray would seem to be involved in a struggling Rectorial campaign, and is being somewhat less than subtle about matters. This does not bode well for his campaigning abilities come 2011 (or, indeed, next month if it comes to that).

And he has perhaps picked the wrong mouthpiece: if this were about the Labour Party, they could have found a better representative than Foulkes: after all, he did vote for top-up fees (not exactly student-friendly). He is the master of the spurious question. He views the Budget not as an opportunity to get some Labour policy on the books and potentially do some good (until, if their HE policy is anything to go by, a Labour government at some point in the future decides that it'd be a wheeze to charge a four-figure annual sum for vocational training), but as a method to eject the SNP from office regardless of the consequences to public services. And he's being reported to the Standards Commissioner for paid advocacy.

So if they wanted a mouthpiece, why didn't they go for someone who isn't such a liability, like, umm.... erm.... nyeurgh...

Hang on, a name will come to me eventually...