Shredding Paper - Labour's Guide to Government

Today, at FMQs, Iain Gray decided on the grand gesture, and .... tore up the SNP manifesto.

Iain's credentials to political maturity were not best served by this rather infantile piece of grandstanding.

But, nothing new there, as Calum Cashley indicated earlier.
Iain did precisely the same with the manifesto that lost Labour the last Scottish election, although presumably he intends to replace the Labour manifesto with something or other in the future.

Possibly a policy or two, who knows, although we'll have to wait two years to get their alternative plan for the Council Tax.
A test of faith indeed for the Labour back benches.

I can't help wondering who's going to come out better from this.
Is it:
1. A Labour opposition which delights in prevention of government policy, even if it costs money for most people in our society.

Or:
2. Swinney's tough, painful, and politically difficult decision, taken for reasons of pragmatism in the face of obduracy from Iain Gray's lords and masters in London.

OK, I'm biased.
It's what comes with the territory when you're a candidate; but is this really what Holyrood's Labour elite is all about?

Waiting for their lords and masters in London to sabotage (£1bn of cuts over the next 2 years, thanks in large part to the incompetence of Brown and Darling) the Scottish block grant, then gloating about it, with not a thought for those in our society who will suffer as a result.

They followed a similar destructive course over the budget, before their self interest circuits activated, and they realised their folly, and backed off sharpish.

And now, it's a puerile display which might get their tame researchers jumping up and down, but which will have little effect on public opinion.

Will this bite?
Unlikely; the Council Tax freeze remains.
People will be not one penny worse off.

So, it's yet another example of Labour mistaking Holyrood for everyday reality.

In the interim, the Scottish government is just going to get on with the job.
By the by, notice how cash for the NHS went up the other day?

Labour wouldn't have put in a single penny of that, had they been re-elected.
It was in the manifesto that Iain tore up - the Labour one, that is.

Interesting priorities indeed.