Dear Angry,

It’s no secret that Scottish Labour has had something of an identity crisis in recent years. From the forgettable days of Iain Gray to the polite but largely ineffective regime of Kezia Dugdale – and let’s not forget the rollercoaster of ruin that was Jim Murphy’s tenure – they have never really had a solid identity, other than being consistently inconsistent.

With the latest popularity contest whittled down to faux socialist Anas Sarwar and Corbyn comrade Richard Leonard, it’s looking ever more likely that the Labour branch office is doomed. Do you see any way that the party can be resurrected?

Gregg, Carlisle

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DEAR Gregg,

Never in my life did I think I would see another politician as inherently foolish as Jim Murphy, but Anas Sarwar is all that and then some. The two have a lot in common, with both being descendants of the Blairite regime and both possessing the charisma and leadership abilities of a wet sock on a stick. They claim to be socialists, but in the same way Eric Cartman claims to be “big boned”. Murphy’s alleged leftist allegiance was as transparent as cellophane, with his “proud socialist” mantra being completely incompatible with his pro-austerity agenda. Likewise, Sarwar’s family business refusing to pay a real living wage whilst he opportunistically rides the coattails of Corbynism is about as virtuous as fart in church.

Furthermore, Sarwar’s recent assertion that he is “the biggest threat to the SNP” has eerie parallels to Jim’s infamously stupid claim that outwitting the SNP was “astonishing easy” prior to his political annihilation at the 2015 general election. Indeed, as far as calamitous careerism goes, Murphy and Sarwar are brass neck and neck. Anas recently produced a promo video where he claimed not to be “motivated by flags like the SNP”, only to later appear holding a saltire in a photograph captioned with the words “it’s our flag too”. On top of these comparatively minor incongruities, Sarwar somehow maintains his role as Labour health spokesman, even though his family firm is known to promote the benefits of smokers to its clients – the tip of the iceberg with Sarwar’s commercial contradictions.

Recently, upon being asked if there was a dividend from his 23 per cent shareholding in the Sarwar-run United Wholesale (Scotland) Ltd, Anas flatly denied that there was. However, UWS company records quickly revealed that he was entitled to dividend income of around £330,000 between 2003 and 2015. This would seem to fly in the face of Labour representing “the many” and not “the few” – as Sarwar is most certainly a millionaire member of the latter. His family is practically an advertisement for hard-line capitalism – even his kids attend private school – and yet Anas is on our televisions telling us we must embrace socialism. Laughably, in an attempt to soften this hypocritical blow, he tried to post his tax return online. However, he ended up accidentally sharing all of his private information – NI number, home address, etc – with the entire world. Not even Murphy was that negligent.

All of this considered, it seems obvious that, between the two, Richard Leonard is the better choice to become Scottish Labour leader. Nevertheless, how effective Leonard would actually be – as a key Corbyn ally – remains in question. After all, Jez has all but nuked his relationship with Scotland in recent months, due in no small part to Labour backing the renewal of Trident. Moreover, his apparent determination to “wipe out” the SNP at the next election seems utterly bizarre in the face of continued Conservative governance at Westminster. Corbyn opting to eradicate a pro-EU, progressive party instead of removing anti-EU, regressive Tories is as offensive as it is senseless. Moreover, many SNP voters actively encouraged England to back Jeremy, and helped promote him online – if this is his idea of a “thank you”, I doubt he will benefit from Scotland’s overly generous support in the future.

The ultimate idiocy of this whole leadership affair is that Scottish Labour, having been on the verge of actually evolving into something useful, now looks set to return to the pointless entity that it has always been. Instead of levelling up to a possible SNP ally, that would back remaining in the EU and work with other parties to oust the Tories, Scottish Labour are being reduced to a Brexit lapdog that would rather bash Nicola Sturgeon than target the real enemies: Ruth Davidson and Theresa May. With any hopes of a left-wing coalition between the SNP, Greens and Labour once again out the window, Scottish Labour will be about as useful as a condom machine in the Vatican.