Old politics In A New Parliament

And so normal service resumes in The Scottish Parliament. At First Minister’s questions, Labour opposition leader Iain Gray launched into his weekly tirade against The SNP on the subject of staffing cuts at NHS Glasgow. They were to be laid firmly at the door of the nationalist administration in Edinburgh. It’s a simple world if you are fortunate enough to inhabit Scottish Labour’s microcosm. The cuts and financial difficulties faced by the board have nothing to do with the former Labour Westminster government’s decision to remove £500 000 000 from the Scottish budget, nor do they have anything to do with the Labour dominated health board overseeing the voluntary redundancies and natural wastage. It’s just the nasty nats failing to protect frontline public services. Nat Cuts! Tory Cuts! Lib-Cuts!

Despite the departure of chief banshee Margaret Curran, the Labour backbenches bawled and taunted with all their usual gusto. It matters not how banal or intellectually fraudulent the line of questioning, what matters is that The SNP are attacked. Rational thought doesn’t enter the equation. The official opposition are like the baying congregation of a charismatic Baptist church, suspending all critical judgement, as a third rate discredited pastor launches into a fundamentalist attack against The Lord’s enemies- though it has to be said that Scottish Labour has a longer enemies list than any Old Testament God.

On election night, I myself must confess to a momentary lapse of reason. A colleague was explaining to me how Scotland had never been in a stronger position to negotiate with our southern neighbours. Not only do we have an SNP government in Edinburgh, but we have a huge block of Labour MP’s with a strong mandate to speak for Scotland. By her thinking, cooperation between the two would not only prove to be an effective defence against the impending ConLib threat to the Scottish Budget, but it could possibly lead to full fiscal autonomy. When it came down to it, she believed Scottish Labour would set aside tribal differences and do what was best for Scotland. For a moment, I believed in her hypothesis- then I remembered just who exactly she was talking about.