Paul Hutcheon

Sunday Herald , 18/11/2007

THE SNP last week used its budget to give handouts to businesses and wealthy householders in Band H homes. They also cut social justice budgets on central heating grants and cash to keep poor kids at school.

This odd set of priorities should be dominating today's papers, but instead the big story is about a 29-year-old spin doctor who lost his job after shouting "c***" at the first minister. So it goes.

In government, rows are covered up and resentment subsides. But election defeats let loose all the feelings pent up by power. The Conservatives are the textbook suicide case, John Major's ejection from Downing Street resulting in the party tearing each other apart for a decade.

Or ask John Swinney. As SNP leader, he held court while those around him knifed each other - and him. He may now be a successful finance minister, but his spell at the top was grimmer than even he cares to remember.

And now it appears to be Scottish Labour that is turning to self-harm. In government, Jack McConnell led a group of ministers whose disputes rarely made into the public domain. In opposition under Wendy Alexander, nearly a row a week is making it into the Sunday papers. First she lost one spin doctor, Brian Lironi, now she has lost another. And all the while a growing number of MSPs wonder - on an off-the-record basis - if she'll lead the party into 2011.

Part of it is down to the nature of politics, rather than Alexander per se. She is an intelligent politician whose analysis of Scottish Labour is engaging and persuasive, but she has taken over at a time when the party seems intent on tearing itself apart.

Some Labour insiders are even beginning to compare Scottish Labour now to the Conservatives post-1997, an analogy which, if true, would condemn the party to at least a decade out of power.

Maybe her "Ideas Scotland" venture, which I am told is a "virtual think tank", will help stop the rot. Some big but simple ideas immediately become clear:

Number 1: Tell all staff working for the party that shouting obscenities at a reception is not a clever thing to do.

Number 2: Learn to trust more than half-a-dozen cronies and try and engage in daily pleasantries, such as saying "good morning" to people as they walk by.

Number 3: Don't demand extra allowances from the hard-pressed taxpayer, especially when there around one billion more deserving causes in Scotland.

At this rate, the SNP (or, more accurately, Alex Salmond) is going to win the next election by a landslide. Where once Wendy Alexander could have been seen as her party's David Cameron, she is beginning to resemble its Iain Duncan Smith.