Are the SNP due a Dunfermline drubbing?

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. Bill Walker is clearly no devotee of Shakespeare, and in resigning his Dunfermline seat a few days ago, he didn't heed Macbeth's advice about the charms of celerity.  But resign the villain finally has, and under the Scotland Act, we'll have a by-election in his Fife constituency within the next three months.  

So what are the chances? Who's in with a shout? And from the SNP perspective, critically, are we going to get stuffed? Let's take a look at the data.

Riding on the coattails of the national party, in 2011, Bill Walker won the seat with 37.6% of the vote, beating the Labour candidate Alex Rowley by 590 votes. Reflecting the mood in much of the rest of the country, the notional incumbent's support went through the floor, Liberal Democrat Jim Tolson polling just 5,776 votes to the winning 11,010 secured by the SNP.  So much we know, but it is also instructive to look forward and backwards from 2011. The party is still polling rather well nationally against Lamont's Labour. But, but...

In the Council elections of 2012, after the accusations against Walker first surfaced but before his trial and conviction, SNP candidates won 5,814 first preferences votes compared Labour's 9,524 in the four Dunfermline wards which the constituency completely covers. The Liberal Democrats trundled in next, with just 3,341 first preferences.  The constituency also takes in parts of The Lochs ward on Fife Council - but Labour won that too, comfortably, snaring 1,729 first preferences to the Nats' 708.  Obviously, the dynamics of the local elections are different from national elections, and different again from a by-election.  For all that, however, these can only be promising figures for the Labour Party in the area. 

Putting the 2011 result in broader context, between 1999 and before 2011, Dunfermline was bifurcated into two distinct constituencies, East and West.  The new seat takes in the the old West constituency, and part of the East, the result of which is now represented by Helen Eadie, as Cowdenbeath.  Going into the 2011 Holyrood election, the Liberal Democrat, Jim Tolson, sat for the western constituency.  As we all now know, in 2011 the SNP came from a notion third place in the seat, behind the Labour party, to take it. To add another layer of complexity to proceedings, the Liberal actually snatched the seat from Labour in 2007, who had held it since 1999. 

Now, I'm no Fifer, and don't know this territory well, but figures lead me to conclude that - at the best of times, in a favourable national election with a tolerably popular SNP government and a suitably incompetent Labour opposition - defending and retaining Dunfermline might prove a tall order for the Nationalists.  Liberal Democrat fortunes have not, and may never, fully revive in the area. The Labour Party may not have the springy vitality of an excitable Cocker spaniel, but if I was a Scottish strategist in John Smith House, Dunfermline would already be circled on the electoral map, as low-hanging fruit.  Even without the scandal of a Nationalist parliamentarian being revealed as a domestic tyrant and unlawfully handy with his fists.

Arguably, the party's poor showing in the area in 2012 is as nothing to the reception we can hope to receive in this by-election.  At that time, Bill Walker was suspected, but innocent until proven guilty. Today, the luckless and brave SNP candidate will have to contend with press hostility, and most likely, an electorate none-too-enamoured with the party which nominated such a goon for election in their constituency.  You needn't subscribe to the idea that there was any jiggery-pokery in the way the party dealt with the Walker case to see that he will hang around the neck of the Nationalist candidate like the Old Man of the Sea, however vigorously or acidly they denounce him in public.  This is one for Nationalists to take on the chin.  Anything short of a drubbing would be a relief. 

As the erstwhile Labour blogger Stuart MacLellan noted a few years back, Labour has never actually won a seat back from the SNP, having lost it. If they can't heave themselves over the finish line first in this Dunfermline by-election, a disgraced Nationalist incumbent having been forcibly pitchforked from party and office after twenty-four criminal convictions and an outrageous display of contempt for his constituents, Scottish Labour really are jiggered.

Thanks, Bill. 

Political thumbscrews

Yesterday, Holyrood passed the Scottish Independence Referendum (Franchise) Act.

Political younglings have cause for celebration. Sixteen and seventeen year olds will be enfranchised. Lags young and old, by contrast, will have been popping no corks last night. Nicola Sturgeon's steady resolution to reject emancipating prisoners held - predictably - to the last.  After a brief flurry of debate, Holyrood rejected four amendments which would have seen at least some prisoners able to vote on polling day in Autumn 2014, ranging from those in prison for four years, to the less ambitious extension of the franchise to those sentenced to six months or less. My own views on this matter have been well-aired here, and need not be revisited.

One detail which did catch my eye in yesterday's debate, however, was the political thumbscrew operations behind the scenes which it disclosed. Of the eight MSPs who supported emancipating some folk in jail, we had Margo MacDonald the two Green MSPs, three Liberal Democrats (their two islander MSPs, Tavish Scott and Liam McArthur being absent), and Jean Urquhart and John Finnie - the two former SNP MSPs who resigned from the party after the NATO debate.  No serving Nationalists joined them. Breathing the free, if chilly, air of independency, perhaps?

Across the chamber, we might have expected at least a couple of Labour MSPs to wobble towards supporting the amendments lodged by Patrick Harvie and the Liberal Democrats.  At stage one of the Bill back in May, both Graeme Pearson and Helen Eadie unexpectedly made sympathetic noises.  Eadie said:

 "This is an opportunity to develop a distinctive alternative to the existing UK blanket ban on convicted prisoners voting in elections. That course could bring us closer to the practice in other European democracies such as Denmark, Finland, Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. The commission recommend ed that the Scottish Parliament should have a debate on whether all prisoners should be banned from voting in the referendum, as expressed in the bill. The commission proposed that that section of the bill be revised adequately to reflect the values that a re placed in Scotland on human rights, social justice and the effective rehabilitation of offenders. The countries in which all convicted prisoners serving prison sentences are disenfranchised are the UK, Armenia, Bulgaria — much as I love Bulgaria, it is wrong in that regard — Estonia, Georgia, Hungary and Russia.

The commission’s key point is based on reasonable and objective justifications, such as the type of crime that was committed or the length of the sentence. It does not propose that every prisoner be given the right to vote. We know that there are many women in Cornton Vale and other prisons who are there for not paying bills. Is it reasonable to disenfranchise a woman who is in prison for not having paid her TV licence or parking fines? I do not think so. However, I would ban serious, violent criminals from having the right to vote. We must distinguish what we are talking about here, and the matter is worthy of a lengthier debate." 

Even more explicitly, Labour MSP Graeme Pearson, a former senior police officer, endorsed the idea of at least some prisoners voting.

"The cabinet secretary indicated in her speech that she believes that she could survive a legal challenge relating to extending the franchise to people who are serving custodial sentences. I would have hoped and expected that she would want to do the right and just thing, and not solely what she can get away with in respect of the ECHR. During my police service, I dealt with countless prisoners, who were in custody for a huge variety of crimes, and my experiences have led me to the view that those who are in prison should not be subjected to a blanket ban on participation in the electoral system. It was mentioned earlier that Scotland is part of a very small group of European countries — the group includes Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Liechtenstein and Russia — that impose such restrictions.

It seems strange to me that the line that we use to determine the franchise is a custodial sentence, no matter whether the person is spending weeks in prison for shoplifting or something similar, or a life sentence for murder. I therefore believe that prisoners who are serving short sentences for less serious offences — we can debate and determine the exact nature and length of those sentences should be allowed to participate in all elections in Scotland. I also believe that, once they are granted a vote, individual prisoners should be made responsible for registering to vote and for arranging for their vote to be submitted, and that it should not be left to the prison authorities to do that on their behalf."

So where were Eadie and Pearson on the day? You guessed it. With all their Labour colleagues, opposing amendments which would have achieved the policy Pearson was ready to endorse a few weeks ago. Johann's clearly had the political thumbscrews out, and grinding, in the Labour caucus. 

Fulsome prison blues...

Is there any way for the SNP to backtrack on the issue of prisoner voting in the independence referendum, and save face? In this weekend's Observer, Kevin McKenna laid into the Scottish Government's proposals to disenfranchise those in jail, arguing that "if there's any justice, prisoners must get the vote" in the referendum. McKenna's interpretation is that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are just feart of the tabloid blowback. Left to their own devices, he suggests, they'd extend the franchise those convicted and behind bars.

"The nationalists want the rest of us to overcome our fear of the unknown and help them to create a better and more just society in an independent Scotland. Yet by denying this basic human right to Scotland's prisoners, they are petrified of backing their own instincts. That makes them both dishonest and craven.  Winston Churchill, as home secretary, said: "The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the unfailing tests of the civilisation of a country." One hundred and three years later, his words are convicting Nicola Sturgeon and her scared party."

But is this credible, that the party (or at least its leadership) isn't really agin the notion of incarcerated folk exercising the franchise? A trawl through the official record of parliament and the press indicates that Sturgeon has been circumspect about commenting on the issue, and ferreting around surfaces nothing from her past record.  In her contribution to the parliamentary debate earlier this month, however, Sturgeon staked out a categorical opposition to prisoner voting in all circumstances, saying "personally, I do not believe that prisoners should have the right to vote in elections". 

"On principle, I believe, as all members do, in active engagement and participation in democracy—that is why I want 16 and 17-year-olds to vote—but I also have a strong belief in the balance between rights and responsibilities. That is partly why I take the view that I do on prisoner voting. I believe that, when an individual commits a crime and is sentenced to a custodial sentence, because the judge considers that the severity of the crime or the circumstances of the case merit such a sentence, the individual loses several rights that the rest of us take for granted, including the right to vote for the period for which they are incarcerated."

This is not, I'd suggest, a position amenable to reverse-ferreting. By contrast with his Deputy, Alex Salmond's attitudes on the issue have been aired before.  He told Holyrood, back in 2010:

"I know that the Liberals are understandably keen on the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights. However, I cannot believe that, back in 1997 when there was blanket signing up to the ECHR, those of us who argued very strongly that human rights should be observed across the European continent thought that one of the key issues would be to give convicted prisoners the right to vote. For most people, that does not seem to be what we would consider to be an important human right."

In Holyrood this month, Labour MSPs Helen Eadie and former polisman, Graeme Pearson, indicated that they are sympathetic to the idea of giving at least some prisoners the vote. By contrast, not a single SNP MSP spoke up in favour of the idea. Linda Fabiani suggested that for the Liberal Democrats to put the Scottish "Government under pressure" on the issue was only illegitimate "flip-flopping", while SNP MSP Richard Lyle did a passable impression of a reactionary Tory backwoodsman, suggesting that to support enfranchising any prisoners was the equivalent of suggesting "that prisoners should decide their own sentences".  Other SNP MSPs expressed similar sentiments. Bruce Crawford said:

"The basic principle behind that is that someone forfeits the right to vote once they have been incarcerated in a penal institution as a result of committing a crime. That is a pretty simple principle to get hold of."

While George Adam parroted your basic social contract theory, contending that:

"... individuals who have committed a crime have broken their pact with society, so I do not agree that they should have the opportunity to vote in the referendum"

Contra McKenna, this cup hardly overfloweth with suppressed enthusiasm for enfranchising lags serving short or long spells in the clink. I dare say some of the mute SNP MSPs might be more sympathetic, but can be expected, as usual, to keep their party discipline, unwilling to embarrass the government in public, and unlikely to dissent in the final vote. Sturgeon surely knew what she was about, setting out the government's categorical opposition to the idea of the participation of incarcerated convicts in our democratic process. Patrick Harvie played it cannily, clearly pitching for a limited compromise, arguing that only prisoners serving less than six months should be entitled to vote.  Even so, even that modest advance stands a snowball's chance in hell of making it onto the statute.

Kevin McKenna suggests that this is "craven and dishonest" politics. If the evidence from SNP parliamentarians is anything to go by, it is neither, unfortunately. 

Assisted dying: Holyrood & "religion in the public square"

Given the weight of religiously-inspired critical responses to Margo MacDonald’s End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, I anticipated with great interest the 9th panel to give oral evidence before Holyrood’s scrutiny committee, consisting of figures from a range of Scottish faith groups. Curiously, the spokesperson from the Catholic Church seems to be appearing on another day. The following folk appeared in the parliament yesterday:

Rev Dr Donald MacDonald, Retired Professor of Practical Theology, Free Church of Scotland; Rev Ian Galloway, Convener, Church and Society Council, Church of Scotland; Major Alan Dixon, Assistant to the Scotland Secretary, Salvation Army; Dr Bill Reid, Connexional Liaison Officer, Methodist Church in Scotland; Dr Salah Beltagui, Convenor, Muslim Council of Scotland; Leah Granat, Public Affairs Officer, Scottish Council of Jewish Communities; John Bishop, Secretary, Humanist Society of Scotland.

It is grossly symptomatic of how trite the Scottish press can be that this significant session, addressing an important issue in the country’s religio-political life and the controversies of faith in the agora, was primarily reported in terms of an off-the-cuff, end of session remark made by a Church of Scotland Minister on the subject of medals. Quality press, my eye.

Helen Eadie began with an unexpectedly pointed question on the “the place of religious evidence” or as the Pope recently put it in Westminster Hall, on the ambit of “the legitimate role of religion in the public square”. This was followed up subsequently by Dr Ian McKee, who put it to the panel that “you’re trying to impose your morals and your religious beliefs on fellow citizens that don’t hold them” and contended that the panel’s appeals to mundane arguments about the social impact of legislative change were largely “side-effect issues”, obscuring the primary religious foundation of their arguments.

In response to Eadie, Dr MacDonald of the Free Church almost immediately embarked on an exegesis of the foundations of his belief in the sanctity of human existence – which underlines the crucial point. To ask someone if their Christianity is simply a personal belief is an absurdity, since it conceives of the faithful mind as if it only looks inward and has no worldview. Christianity posits a whole cosmology, Catholicism a whole redemptive economy. How can one coherently require of the faithful to shrug apologetically when they confess their faith in a higher power, as if to say – don’t take me too seriously; the existence of the Big Man upstairs is just my own dull apprehension. There are distinct questions about what we do, what provisions we make in our administration and law and concerns about the practical imposition of a particular worldview or how any of our convictions or ethical assessments ought or ought not to filter into law. However, the idea that Christians should be thirled to conceptions of “personal belief” is surely a nonsense. Religion, it seems to me, effects a general transubstantiation of the world. As Reverend Ian Galloway expressed it to the Committee, it is “a view of how life is.” The religious literally occupy a different world from those of us who don’t see the hand of the Lord at work in it. That said, atheists too shouldn’t have too relaxed a conscience. After all, the atheist worldview performs a similar act of encompassing those with radically different ideas about what the world is. If the godless feel vexed by the persistent belief in divine ontologies of God, saints, angels, divine sons and so on - feel put upon by the unwelcome figuration of sin being imputed to their lives - imagine the reciprocal difficulty the pious must have with atheistical empty cosmological space. Just as Christian theology encompasses those who don’t submit to it, so too atheism co-opts Christians.

One classic answer to these difficulties is the equalising function of the liberal public sphere, which is imagined as neutral arbiter between incompatible worldviews. One of the great virtues of this position is that it doesn’t mistake consensus for agreement in any fundamental sense on the axioms that lead us there. I'm sure I can have an interesting discussion with a Church of Scotland Minister on the importance of social justice, however even if we managed to agree on what we ought to do and how we should do it - we'd be making a mistake if we thought we'd had a wholesale meeting of the minds. Christ hovers over the Minister's shoulder, while I'm imagine myself in Christless conversation with my own daemon. That shouldn't cause us to devalue the consensus we achieve. By no means. Yet it should also caution us to recall the latent cracks and fissures atop which our consensus is precariously balanced.  

However, that equalising function presents problems, not least because it seems methodologically atheistic, premissed on an acceptance of the atheistical world view. Cauld Christian conform. A by-product of this, it seems to me, is that enthusiastic secularists can sometimes mistake methodological atheism for a precondition to participate in the public debate. That is the logic implied by Eadie's question and McKee's references to imposition. The same question would never be asked of a witness who didn't toddle into the parliament as representative of the Lord of Hosts. In short, the atheist is far more likely to see the world in terms of personal beliefs, figured in terms of an equalised public sphere. Participation in debate on these terms calls for no interesting transformations. Not so for the committed Christian, who has to move from one cosmological register of their faith to the artificial equality posited by the public debate. The panel immediately conceded that their intentions were not to impose, but an attempt to participate in the discourse, better to realise the best public good. They bowed head in obeisance to the equalising qualifications of the liberal public sphere. This seems to me to be what Archbishop Rowan Williams was referring to in his response to Pope Benedict the Umpteenth, during the latter's recent visit:

We do not as churches seek political power or control, or the dominance of Christian faith in the public sphere; but the opportunity to testify, to argue, sometimes to protest, sometimes to affirm – to play our part in the public debates of our societies. And we shall, of course, be effective not when we have mustered enough political leverage to get our way but when we have persuaded our neighbours that the life of faith is a life well lived and joyfully lived.

These seem to me to be wise thoughts which emphasise the double movement religious folk in the agora go through to put their views across. For those of us without faith, we would do well  to reflect on the fact that our views suffer no comparable ordeal as they cross into the echo-chamber of the public forum - and have some sympathy for our religious fellow citizens. We need not agree with them. Indeed, I oppose the gist of the testimony Holyrood received from this religious panel, as regular readers here will not be surprised to hear. This I would insist upon - a quick thought spent on the little ordeal of faith in politics in Holyrood yesterday, close to home, has much to teach us.

Holyrood's Health 2 Committee...

So, there we have it. The Health and Sport committee won’t be summing up the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill. Or will it? After the vote confirming the parliamentary bureau’s divided decision to set up a new, ad hoc committee to scrutinise the Bill on the 10^th, committee memberships were proposed by the respective parties. The SNP tribunes, hostile to the ad hoc wheeze, defeatedly sneaked in their nominations during the Thursday session of the 11^th of February. Wondering who would likely serve, I took to gently ransacking the parliamentary record, the press having failed to do my collating work for me. There is something rather striking about the confirmed list of commissioners which I discovered.

As an aside, I’m not terrifically happy with the name. Catchily baptised the ‘End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill Committee’, this is a thing of mortal dread and head-stopping boredom to rattle off the keyboard every time. If I was Sarah Palin, I’d warm to mortuary theme and call it the ‘death panel’. Given the gravity of its business – and lest I be accused of lodging baseless allegations about partiality in their ranks – I can’t go down that road. For brevity, therefore, I’ve decided to call them the ‘Assisted Dying Committee’ throughout. But back to our personnel. Finnie bristling authoritatively in the front rank, his five firm-fetlocked privates are as follows:

Convenor Ross Finnie (LD)
Michael Matheson (SNP)
Ian McKee (SNP)
Helen Eadie (Lab)
Nanette Milne (Con)
Cathy Peattie (Lab)

Compare this with the Health and Sport Committee, who Unionista Holyrood business managers determined couldn’t review the legislative material, whether on the grounds of its ‘moral content’, an argument about the wealth (i.e. not just health) of issues engaged by the Bill, or because of some spurious ad hominem against Grahame or MacDonald for that matter:

Convenor Christine Grahame (SNP)
Dept Convenor Ross Finnie (LD)
Helen Eadie (Lab)
Rhoda Grant (Lab)
Michael Matheson (SNP)
Ian McKee (SNP)
Richard Simpson (Lab)
Mary Scanlon (Con)

I’ve heard it persuasively argued that pattern-recognition and systematising of knowledge is a feature of the human brain. Pray, can you detect any eye-smiting similarities here? The Assisted Dying committee’s obvious primary difference is a thinned number of ranks. While the Health Committee numbers eight parliamentarians, the ad hoc is numbered two shyer, at six. That aside, continuity is conspicuous. No less than four of the six folk drafted currently serve on the Health Committee. Milne served on the equivalent committee in the parliament’s second session, from February 2005 to April 2007.

You might well argue – this is predictable enough from the SNP, who gloomily underline their point even in defeat by sending two of their healthmen out to bat. But what of Eadie and Finnie? From perusing her page at the parliament, I gather that Nanette Milne qualified as a Doctor in the 1960s, but lapsed to look after her children, and in her own words “worked part-time in cancer related research”. Peattie alone seems a mysterious choice, not sent to the committee either by dint of her background in the health professions or membership of the health committee. There may be a dynamic at work which escapes me, here. I’d be delighted to be illuminated as to why she might have been plucked from the Labour positions. So, we’ve functionally achieved an anti-health committee, stacked with members of the health committee and health professionals. Spiffy. On reflection, maybe I shouldn’t have dedicated myself so soon to the shorthand title of ‘Assisted Dying Committee’. From the foregoing, Health 2 Committee, as was the style in the last parliament, could serve us just as well and just as accurately. At which point, I wanted to stir a little fly into the parliamentary ointment. But first, an apt quote from Margo’s roaring dissent on the 10^th of February.

“That I believe that the balance of opinion is probably against the bill is of no import, but it is very important that the committee's composition should result in balanced scrutiny. That is relevant because, with such a bill, on which members will have a free vote that they will cast according to conscience, the expected outcome is not a report signed off in the committee's name that has the support of the majority of members but an in-depth summary of the information that the committee's investigation has uncovered, which will be presented to MSPs as a neutral document, not as a recommendation.” 11^th February Official Report at Col 23700

Although I appreciate the work of doctors and allied health professionals – I’ve never found them to be amongst the most erudite or lucid sections of society. This makes perfect sense on one level – if you’ve got your head buried in septic colons or ulcerous bladders, you won’t be attending to your philosophical studies or musing critically and systematically on the existential travails of the human spirit and its seeking after knowledge. You won’t have time. Even opening another book may seem a terrible chore. Crawling inside a bottle may become your only recreation. Not that I wish to suggest, in some crass generalisation, that those with medical backgrounds are any more incapable than any other cretin of thinking cogently about matters of autonomy, sacral or ungodly arguments about the sanctity of life, or ethics, or the implications for the administration of justice (to whit, Eadie is standing or sitting rebuttal, depending on her posture). Merely that their health credentials may be of more imagined usefulness that real tools to excavate ourselves from the moral, ethical and practical complexities surrounding the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill. For now, I’m willing to suspend judgement and see how the six souls selected perform.

# If I only had a brain! #

The Scotsman revealed yesterday that an (improbably) cerebral parliamentary delegation is forming and that five MSPs are to donate their grey matter to science once they’ve snuffed it. The gags write themselves. Second-hand brain: only one careful owner, who only operated it at weekends. Or perhaps, if we’re feeling more spiteful, the ad should read Bargain: brand new brain. Never been used. Still in original packaging.

Wendy Alexander’s wrinkly stoater will be joined by the more or less entirely smooth upper storeys of Kenny Gibson, Helen Eadie and James Kelly, to be filed beneath the spent cognitive walnut of Marlyn Glen, once they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. The tribunes’ brains, spinal cord and cerebrospinal fluid will be invested in the Parkinson’s Brain Bank, based at Imperial College London. The laudable goal of the research is better to understand Parkinson’s disease, to whit affected and unaffected brains are of scientific interest. That respectful caveat aside, I defy any soul with a pinch of humour to meditate on Gibson or Eadie or Kelly donating their brains to science without experiencing a wry smile. It’d be like the Maximum Eck foregoing his self-deprecation for Lent. Or Iain Gray hoping to make the most of his mellifluous tones and embarking on a lucrative voice-over career.

In seamless (or should that be lobeless) segue, fareweel Cathy! Jamieson has flung in her particular tartan towel to spend more time with her would-be Westminster constituency. What I find a bit difficult to understand is why Jamieson and old Margie Curran want to go to Westminster. Presumably both anticipate a Labour defeat and arriving in the Commons to the drifting, bruised irrelevance of a recently relegated party in opposition. Moreover, if they wish to improve the lot of their constituents, why try for a job that renders them basically powerless in addressing most of the basic cares of the populus? Why choose to be a domestic irrelevance, doubly irrelevant if your lot are out of office?

From the Holyrood perspective, I’m struggling to mint the right metaphor. Its not quite rats fleeing a sinking ship. Scottish Labour’s craft floundering in 2007 - that ship is well sunk, and is collecting coral and limpets and seaweed. Alternatively, we might regard it as a shadow cabinet haemorrhaging, their stoppered lifeblood seeking and leaking towards better prospects elsewhere. If so, that's crackers. If being a backbencher in a defeated Labour party is that better prospect, things must really be grim in John Smith House. Hardly an indicator of much health in the good ship Gray, however spicy his shanties. However, there is also a more positive account of Labour tribune wastage. A while back, I argued that one of Labour’s main problems is the perception that their MSPs are a slumping, gormless, glottally-stopped cadre of intellectual pygmies. There are exceptions, certainly, and diddies of every political stripe. However, Scottish Labour also faces the problem of entrenchment – changes of personnel are difficult to realise, due to Labour’s reliance on constituency parliamentarians. A couple of members of the group slinking out of Holyrood represents an interesting possibility for change, a beneficial ‘position vacant’ sign.

That said, in terms of a cull, I’m not sure if I’d hope to begin with my inner circle…