Are UK politics really better than those across the pond?

It’s prudent to remember that ­parties are prone to over-promising during the ­campaign, and under-delivering post-election. As for manifestos? What ­Scotland’s many celebrated writers wouldn’t give for such soaring imaginations! Suffice to say that if the manifestos were properly billed as works of fiction, they would top the best-seller list nae problem.

Their grasp of basic arithmetic is a wee thing shaky too, as witness the current ­debate over the future of energy. ­According to their opponents, Labour’s stance on ­fossil fuel jobs will cause either 100,000 or 200,000 workers to get their jotters. Take your pick.

Sir Keir Starmer popped up to Scotland again on Friday to launch his Great British Energy company for which all Scots should apparently fall on their knees in gratitude at its base being north of the Border. Or might have until they remembered that we ­actually export our surplus electricity to England. It’s supposedly worth some $365 billion a year which is a lot of terawatts.

Especially when you remember that in some parts of Scotland – thanks to an old deal based on proximity to supply – lots of Scots have to pay more to keep the lights on than their cousins in England’s deep south.

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Not that we can really claim bragging rights in the matter of doing energy deals either. By common consent, the ScotWind auctions of 2022 and subsequently, brought the Scottish Government relative washers compared with what the –usually foreign – owners got for their capped investment. Capped by us, by the way.

Common Weal’s estimable Craig Dalzell claims our auctions raised 40 times for the investors what ScotWind got. Whatever the final tally it seems incontestable that we managed to wildly undervalue our own ­offshore energy resources.

So even so-called publicly owned, not-for-profit companies can get their sums wrong. Though at least they’ve gone into bat for the consumer rather than the shareholder. The bourach down south of the privatised water companies chucking raw sewage into rivers whilst paying out huge dividends and executive salaries is a potent reminder of why playing footsie with these concerns is never one which favours the punters.

The carve-up of the railways is another case in point. That jolly ploy led ­initially to some 34 separate train ­operating ­companies whilst the tracks on which they ran were under the ownership of Network Rail. Confused? So were they. Even John Major thought it a ­mistake. Though, unfortunately, not at the time.

Some seven companies had to be taken into public ownership – the owner of last resort! I doubt Scots have taken to the streets to hail rail nationalisation in ­Scotland, but at least we own the bloody thing, and we run it. A bit of a useful ­metaphor for independence when you think about it …

Elsewhere in the Great British ­Election company, the UK Tories found that a lot of ­supporters – not to mention ­candidates – turned out to be fair-weather friends. And their friends never were much for having the rain affect their bank balances.

The UK LibDems did what they do best at campaign time and had their leader do daft, attention-seeking things. Not sure how often Ed Davey had to fall off his paddle board for the snappers, but ­undeterred, he turned up on a water chute at a pool. Did nobody advise him that Rishi Sunak has already cornered the drookit leader market?

Meanwhile, the super-cautious Labour Party got themselves in a self-inflicted fankle when Faiza Shaheen and, initially, Diane Abbott, were left twisting in the wind by a Labour NEC whose indecision seemed at first well-nigh final. By absolutely no ­coincidence, the folk jettisoned from ­assorted lists all seemed to be from the left flank of the party.

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So much for “broad church” Labour whose aisles get ever more narrow. When you heard their shadow health guru talk about “making work pay”, you could close your eyes and imagine the same ­mantra dropping from Tory lips. Because it ­already has.

Sir Keir is wont to boast that he has changed the Labour Party utterly since he took the reins. And this is undoubtedly so. Nobody could ever confuse it with a people’s party these days, most especially the unions who gave birth to it.

Meanwhile, the launch of the Greens in England talked about taxing the very wealthy to pay for their programme, and were I living in England, I might find that a seductive plan.

Yet bizarre as our election capers must seem to folk looking on, in the matter of true craziness, we must bow to our friends over the pond.

It seems as if the convicted felon Donald J Trump – who will learn his sentence next month – is still entirely entitled to contest the presidency on behalf of his party. In fact, he’s entitled to do so if, by any lucky chance, the judge puts him in the pokey.

There was a time when I visited the USA pretty well annually in those halcyon days when politics there, relatively speaking, seemed almost normal. Admittedly, even the Democrats were well to the right and the Republicans more Tory than the ­average Tory. But still, there were some constitutional norms being observed.

Those were the days when party ­conventions at least had a semblance of debate and the winning candidate could still come out of left field, as Barack ­Obama did when the smart money had been on Hilary Clinton for months.

Not any more. It will be four years come January 6 since a bunch of ­hoodlums stormed their mother of parliaments, blessed by their then-president, who watched approvingly as Congress almost fell to “his people”.

Some Republican senators who feared for their lives on that day managed to ­persuade themselves subsequently that it was no more than a wacky tourist tour. Some have admitted to ditching their jackets and trying to look like part of the posse. Most hid under whatever cover they could find.

And now they seem set to anoint the agitator-in-chief as their nominee for a second spell in the White House. To call his first term chaotic hardly does justice to that word. Yet despite damning evidence of ignorance across a range of issues from vaccines to Vlad The Bad, despite his ­being stranger to hard or any kind of work, somehow he feels equipped to run again.

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Somehow his party – who must have read at least some of the many chilling ­accounts of his indolent and whimsical behaviour from the staffers who threw in the towel – seem to think him a fit and proper person to lead his country. ­Doubtless into all manner of new ­disasters.

He is not fit, he’s most certainly not ­proper, and he’s pushing 80. His ­opponent has already passed that ­milestone ­birthday. Talk about two bald men ­fighting over a comb! Instead, these two elderly ­bruisers are having a title fight and neither of their parties seem ­inclined to locate enough spinal material to stop them.

Perhaps we should congratulate ­ourselves that whatever else has ­befallen us – Boris Johnson and Liz Truss at ­Number 10, for instance – we are still not in thrall to as many conspiracy ­theorists as the Yanks.

But then you remember the sheer ­insanity of the Rwandan scheme, the ­utter folly of the Brexit deal, and the fact that Jacob Rees Mogg could be a ­minister and you begin to wonder if the UK ­really does have much of a sound grasp of ­political sanity.

Frankly, in an independent Scotland, “things can only get better”.