THERE’S less than a week to go before the Holyrood elections, and despite all the arguments about who independence voters should give their list votes to in order to maximise the chances of a large pro-independence majority, there’s only really one question in this ballot. That question is just how gubbed is Labour going to get? This is the party that once dominated Scottish politics like score settling, back stabbing and clyping erstwhile mates to the papers dominates the time and energy of a Lanarkshire cooncillor. The available outcomes in this election for Kezia’s not so merry band are totally gubbed, utterly gubbed, or gobsmackingly gubbed.

One of the reasons that Labour is heading for a gubbing is because score settling, back stabbing, and clyping erstwhile mates to the papers is all the party has been any good for for as long as anyone can remember. There’s nothing that Labour likes more than a good self-inflicted row and providing a career opportunity for a dedicated greasy pole climber. Labour has given us the debt mountain of PFI which grows every day with the rubble of Edinburgh schools. It gave us illegal wars, triangulation, and everything that we’d have got if we’d voted Tory. It also gave us a whole lot of disappointment and despair. All those opportunities to make the UK a better place, and Labour wasted them on the vanity of Tony Blair and the vacuous ego of Gordie Broon.

Now, as the Tories rip into one another over the issue of EU membership, and a Channel 4 investigation into their electoral practices uncovers serious issues that could lead to prosecutions and even the rerunning of the election in certain constituencies, cracks the width of the Grand Canyon have opened up in that party that any half-decent opposition could use to its advantage. However, rather than using the Tories’ misfortunes to weaken and discredit the most right-wing government we’ve been inflicted with for decades, Labour has decided it’s unfair for the Conservatives to have all the fun, and Labour’s representatives are getting stuck into one another over accusations of anti-Semitism.

The allegations of anti-Semitism provide a convenient excuse for the Blairite right to attack the Corbynista left and gain some traction where they’ve previously failed. All that the unedifying display proves to voters in Scotland is that the only party which Labour is capable of opposing effectively is itself. It sure as hell isn’t the Tories. The only effective opposition to the Tories at Westminster is the SNP.

Labour has been described as a zombie party because it exists in the realms of the undead. It is already deceased but its limbs haven’t noticed yet. There’s probably a minimum number you need to count as a horde, but after the Holyrood election Labour won’t have enough MSPs left to qualify. They’ll struggle to fill a tandem. However, comparing Labour to a zombie party is unfair to zombies. Zombies don’t attack one another. They don’t cheat, or lie, or dissemble. They don’t put in expenses claims. They don’t make promises that they have no intention of delivering. They just shuffle along looking for brains to eat. The Labour party is less moral than a zombie horde, is more expensive to maintain even though it’s less numerous, and it doesn’t have as much in the way of brains either.

Even now, as the vultures circle and the UK party tears itself apart in yet another bout of self-inflicted violence, it is rumoured that Anas Sarwar is poised to pick over whatever bones of the Labour corpse the zombies discard after the upcoming election. Anas, whose greatest achievement was inheriting a Westminster seat from his da before spectacularly losing one of the party’s safest seats in the General Election in May, thinks that he has the skills and abilities to succeed where Jim Murphy and Kezia have failed. Although Labour would be hard-pressed to find a Scottish leader who would be any shoutier, more glib, and more supercilious than Jim, or one who was any more inept and clueless than Kezia, Anas wouldn’t disappoint. Labour has already given Scotland so many reasons to hate it, and Anas would put in no end of effort to give us some more.

Labour kept its Scottish manifesto under wraps until the very last minute because they wanted to reduce the amount of scrutiny that it received. It was bound to fall apart anyway, but by the cunning wheeze of keeping it secret until the very last minute the party has ensured that it falls apart just before voters go to the polls and the entire debacle is still fresh in their minds. This is what passes for leadership strategy in the Labour party these days. Even zombies are capable of being more cunning.