A perfect 10 - or The Beach Boys?

It's a Beautiful South for Wendy Alexander today as she got the opportunity to rate her own performance as leader of the Labour group of MSPs.


How good does she think her performance is?

"Rising all the time, I think is the answer," said Ms Alexander, adding: "Ten
out of 10, 10 out of 10."

Fantastic - Wendy's so good she's leaving the earth's gravity behind and heading for the stars. You'll note I said nothing about the moon and wiring.


Bow down, bow down and grovel in abject obsecration before this self-proclaimed genius.


No good vibrations coming her way from Brian Wilson, though, he's accused her of 'prattling' and said:

"Wendy Alexander is very much part of the presiding influences in Labour politics over the past 20 years in Scotland who have decided that politics is really about constitutions and commissions and the more we set up the better life must be."

Yup, he's right - she's useless. He also seems to agree with a couple of Labour MSPs:

"To be honest I would rather have a referendum than this sort of incremental nonsense of fiddling about with powers. I fail to understand why the people who have created Labour's difficulties in Scotland seem to learn nothing and keep on making the same mistakes."

Never thought I'd agree with Brian Wilson - have the referendum, you know you want to! Labour MEP David Martin agrees with me:

"I said we should call Alex Salmond's bluff, have a referendum – yes or no on independence – a short sharp debate and get it out of the way."

Excellent! Bring on the referendum!


Related news comes from the minutes of Labour's South/Pentlands branch where Iain Gray was the guest speaker on the 6th March 2008 in the Braid Centre. The Gray man did not hold back.


He told them that Labour had lost the trust of the people, that the Westminster allocation to Scotland was short of what had been expected, that the SNP was showing how to manage Government well, and that he didn't like the coalition with the Libdems.


He criticised the SNP for "cutting taxes to stimulate growth" (does he not think that Scotland's economy should grow?) and seems to have missed the bit in the budget that pays for 1,000 new police officers.


By and large, though, he admitted Labour was finished.


Sad to see that "The election of Richard Gardner to the Constituency Executive was disputed". Can Labour party members not get on with each other at all?