DOES Scottish Labour leader Wendy really know what she's doing? It's a fair question to ask. Only two years ago she was touting around Edinburgh a pomposity of professors who could tell us how to run our country better. Socialism had little to do with it, planning controls should be simpler while incentives and deregulation was also proffered.
Now our Wendy likes to tell trade unionists and Labour activists how much of a dyed-in-the-wool, red-blooded socialist she is. It must be something in her municipal Paisley water supply that affects the memory.
So to this week's astonishing reve
lation, that Wendy now supports an early referendum on Scots deciding if we want an independent state, rather like Belgium or Albania, when previously she had sided with Gordon Brown in running away from the idea.
What is she up to? Has she thought this through, or is it a panic response to Labour's worst local election results in England and Wales for some 40 years, and continued poor polling in Scotland?
Regular readers of this column will maybe recall that I have for a long time supported the idea of Alex Salmond being challenged to a referendum on the issue of Scottish independence.
Sadly, party leaders in both Scotland and London have shied away from this course of action, displaying all the political courage of mice and revealing an appalling lack of self-belief in their cause.
Instead, Salmond has been able to hang tough and look brave, when in actual fact he too is running away from a potential public soaking, postponing any such vote until he thinks he can win it – and that means not now!
Salmond has made the calculation that Scotland wanted minimal change – kicking out Labour and the Liberal Democrats – rather than the seismic shift of independence, so he wants and needs time to strengthen his following. So far the polls suggest it's working.
Labour's response to defeat was outwardly to do very little; indeed it has been hard to believe it has yet to come to terms with the result – many of its MSPs still betray such arrogance.
I know from my own discussions with party stalwarts that the truth has been different and that key people have been arguing for a change of approach for some time. The Calman Commission to study further powers for Holyrood was the first step, delayed by all the shenanigan's surrounding the financing of Wendy's leadership campaign.
Labour had concluded that to win a referendum it should be in a position of supporting a new improved Parliament rather than the current model, even if it isn't mentioned on the ballot paper. So the Commission was born, bringing the naive and unwitting Nicol Stephen and Annabel Goldie into its elephant trap.
While Wendy's announcement that there should be a referendum may have been tactical, as indeed will be the posturing of a disagreement with Brown – it makes her look stronger and more Scottish – the plan to call Salmond's bluff is now strategic. It has at last been grasped that Salmond must be confronted if his arguments are to be tested and defeated.
The question remains though, how does Wendy bring forward the referendum from a position of opposition? To do it from Westminster might be too heavy-handed.
She must therefore woo the support of Stephen and Goldie, unless she calls Salmond's bluff again and lets the SNP Government draft the question, leaving him nowhere to go but hold the vote sooner rather than later.
An inconvenient truthIf you have ever wondered how your taxes get spent on public health campaigns, here's an example.
This week, claimed an ITV documentary, "one in four of pre-school children is overweight or obese" taken from a Department of Health publication.
When my friend Tony Dowling pointed out to them that the document they were quoting had a typographical error saying age five instead of age 15, the producer simply ignored him.
The falsehood that our nurseries are swarming with obese infants will quickly become the received wisdom. As I write political nannies and bullies throughout Britain are dreaming up ways to spend your money controlling what toddlers eat. It's that easy.
Boris shines throughWhat an outstanding victory for Boris Johnson in the London mayoral election, with a million first preference votes, and how gracious he was in victory thanking Ken Livingstone for his past work.
There is a distinct lack of colour, personality and charm in today's politics and Boris brightens the vista by delivering all three.
Many people make the mistake of thinking he's a court jester, an entertaining fool, but it's as much a cultivated image as his blond haystack of a hairstyle. He's an acerbic writer and a bright intellect, but fully aware of his own limitations.
Still, I can't wait for his first gaffe. Only then will he find out who his true friends are. And he will need some, rather than the many sycophants who will now be saying he was always their man.
The full article contains 846 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
