Halloween brings no magic for Labour

Since May 2007 Labour have been looking for the magic spell that will make the SNP disappear. Having relied solely on the "sums don't add up" formula to see them through years of competition with the SNP, Labour has searched since for something that will do the trick as effectively.

Wendy - she of the planet sized intellectual pretensions - was supposed to be able to conjure up a suitable scheme. Struggling from the start to find an easy solution to the SNP problem, Wendy conscripted to Labour's cause an army of vulnerable two year olds; "socialism"; Jackie "Nuke-em" Baillie and a score of other temporary human shields and fly by night substitutes for policy.

In recent times Scottish Labour must have felt its luck was on the up. Global economic collapse, Brown's dead cat bounce, press gullibility and the problems of Iceland seemed to have combined nicely to create the magic potion that, in a puff of smoke, would make the SNP disappear forever – the thing devolution was supposed to do but didn’t.

As they stand round the cauldron stirring together these ingredients Labour seem to be unaware that they are doing nothing more than bringing back to life the two monsters – let’s call them Fear and Negativity - which overwhelmed them in the first place.

For at the heart of Scottish Labour there remains an enduring unanswered question - what are they for? To be perpetually against something is just not good enough – for one thing it is extremely unattractive to voters. To revel in the misfortunes of others and to make electoral capital at the expense of confidence in Scotland’s economy is evidence of moral and political bankruptcy.

If stories in today’s papers are to be believed, Glenrothes is already won for the nationalist cause. If that is true then we must be grateful to the huge effort that so many thousands of SNP members and supporters have put in to make it possible. I hope the predictions are right. If they are they will confirm what I said in an earlier post - Brown has already been bounced.

Interestingly Iain Gray, the leader of the Labour members in the Scottish Parliament, has been relatively quiet on the attacking Scotland front. Maybe he has had the nouse to understand that running down the country plays badly with voters – after all, the tactic lost Labour the election last year. In the event of an SNP win, it would be interesting to speculate on Mr Gray’s views on the role played by Jingo Jim Murphy in bringing about such a result.