Leader: Insult to voters

Published on 24/06/2010 14:24

'MAGGIE, Maggie, Maggie - out, out, out!" That totemic mantra of the 1980s is beginning to look ominously like a précis of the Scottish Labour manifesto at this election. Iain Gray and his colleagues are campaigning on the bogey-woman menace of a Prime Minister who demitted office more than 20 years ago. Do they not realise what an insult that is to the intelligence of an electorate deeply concerned about the economic crisis and its impact on jobs, home-ownership and living standards?

Iain Gray has been flogging this dead horse since the days when Labour was in power at Westminster. In 2009 he told the Cooperative Party conference: "We have to be alert to the threat of the return of the Tories and their Thatcherite ideology." His website nostalgically records: "Thirty years ago we were together resisting the rise of Thatcherism." Yes, but most people have moved on since then. Now they would like to hear Gray address the policies of Alex Salmond as incumbent First Minister.

This is not a Westminster election, this is an election for the Scottish Parliament. This is not Labour against the Tory cuts, they are already against the Tory/Lib Dem cuts in Westminster and a fat lot of good it is doing anyone. Labour's anti-Thatcher crusade did it a turn at last year's Westminster election and you can see why they would be keen to rally that support again, but it is cynical opportunisism and lays bare their view of the electorate.

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