Abracadabra

I watched First Minister's Questions (FMQs) yesterday in the Scottish Parliament - except that it wasn't the real thing - because Alex Salmond was in China banging the drum for international trade.

So it fell to the Deputy First Minister - Nicola Sturgeon - to answer the questions of political friends and foes alike. 

First up was the outgoing Scottish Labour leader - Iain Gray - and what a dismal display he put on with a series of attacks on the Scottish Government over cuts in public services.

The police, teachers and NHS staff were all under attack by the SNP Government - alleged Iain Gray - and were responsible for imposing worse cuts in public spending than took place under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Now this cut very little ice with Nicola Sturgeon - as you can imagine - but I came away wondering how could the Scottish Labour party have become so out of touch and delusional?

In case no one's noticed it was Alistair Darling - the former Labour Chancellor - who predicted while in office that the scale of the financial crisis would mean big cuts in public spending - whether a Labour or Tory  government was in power.

As it turns out we have a coalition government at Westminster - which sets the Scottish Government's budget - and the reality is that whether a Labour or a Tory chancellor was holding the purse strings - public spending would be taking a big hit.

In fact it was Alistair Darling himself who first raised the spectre of a return to the 1980s - in a candid interview with The Herald newspaper - which infuriated Gordon Brown at the time because the Labour chancellor didn't pull his punches.

Darling freely admitted that things were bad and were about to get a lot worse - and he remains one of the few Labour politicians to emerge from that last Labour government - with his integrity and reputation intact.

Quite where that leaves Scottish Labour is beyond me - the party is bereft of any leadership and seems intent on pursuing a strategy which blames the Scottish Government for the country's economic woes - while saying there would  be better cuts or no cuts at all under Labour.

Now this is a laughable argument and won't impress anyone - which is great shame because as the main opposition party - Labour really has nothing to say.

Other than - 'it's all someone else's fault' and 'I wish I had a magic wand'.

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