I'm Scottish but I cannot help it.

Ed Miliband, the heir to the man with more teeth than sense, in a blinding masterstroke of political campaigning has sent furth an emissary from London to his Scottish branch membership. His mission, to show his poor unenlightened  Northern Jocks how to win an election. 

Ed and Iain, a touching relationship.

It is now a distant eight years ago since the Labour regional party last won a 'local' election at Holyrood. They then faced a weak SNP riven by internal rumblings after a particularly nasty leadership tussle between the gradualists and the fundamentalists. John Swinney emerged victorious, but was condemned as the Iain Gray of his day, aka a charisma free zone, with little or no public perception. 

The McConnell -Jim Wallace pact was at its most vulnerable, with gaffes being served up on a near daily basis by our then somewhat saner media. Simple things like private security firm Reliance forgetting to lock their prison van doors led to crims legging it to freedom, including a convicted killer. There was also McConnell’s much derided decision to attend a golfing dinner in St Andrews rather than the French D-Day commemorations, or the very public square go with Sir Sean Connery during the Tartan Day celebrations in New York, even the leaking to the Daily Record of sensitive commercial information regarding job cuts to ensure the future of Scottish Opera, were all open goals. Unfortunately substitute Swinney got the jitters and blasted the ball over the bar from the penalty spot. Nary a goal was scored at FMQ's. Polls at the time showed that support for independence was higher than support for the SNP. Campaigning under the rather milksoppish 'Release our Potential', the SNP came a cropper and Labour romped to victory on a record low 49.4% turnout. Politics in Scotland was at its lowest ebb and the electorate most disillusioned. Labour had won by default, not on their record.

So fast forward eight years and Ed and co have decided that as well as copying the widely agreed successful SNP government policies, what their membership really needs to firm up their core vote is the raising of the walking dead. Arise Maggie Thatcher, Queen of the Zombies.  This rekindling of Thatcher's ghost is according to those who spin for Labour, in our media. apparently sealing the deal with their core vote, which they place at an unqualified 30% of the electorate. 


Unfortunately when you govern a regional branch remotely, you have no real idea what's happening on the ground, particularly when you're dependent on one who walked the killing fields of Cambodia, when he was nbut a bairn. Ed and co have to realise that Scotland is not stuck in the 1980's, Kirstie Wark may be working the same look, but the rest of us have moved on. Civic Scotland for all its faults will not hark back to the Unenlightenment, where Labour in Scotland produced the feeble fifty, who sat by collecting their expenses, wages and pensions whilst working class Scots went hungry. They offered no support to miners, steelworkers, ship builders and presided over the emasculation of the Scottish workforce. They took their Union support and shafted the workers.

Thatcher's babies may be in charge in London but electing a nonentity like Iain Gray or his next-in-line arrogant tithead Andy Kerr to protect Scotland would be as effective as entering Jackie Baillie for the Commonwealth Games ladies marathon.  

Even the anti-SNP Scotland on Sunday have seen through their lies and roundly excoriated them for it in their leader. It's not often I agree with the Johnston Press but on this occasion my tweed cap is tipped in their direction.