Ah, the Glesga banter ...

There was a chap I spoke to in Glasgow East when I was canvassing - mid fifties, perhaps - who told me he was voting SNP for the first time ever after a lifetime commitment to Labour. He didn't say he was ever a member of that party, but he did say that he'd always voted and always voted Labour and was changing his vote now because Labour isn't even a shadow of the party it once was and its members "will say anything now to get elected" while the SNP Government has impressed him by doing some things he thinks needed done.

That wouldn't have been enough to change his vote, he said, but Labour politicians "have nothing to say these days, they're always negative". He used to think that there might have been a point in the 1980s and 1990s to attack a government he thought was bad for Scotland, but he's not so sure now that even that was a good idea. It contrasted unfavourably with earlier generations of members of what was once a movement who had argued the case for which early Labour MPs were sent to Parliament. He got straight to the point - "telling lies in a shrill, hectoring tone is no substitute for the discipline of good debate".

I can see his point. Labour's campaigning seems to be a series of lies these days - Margaret Curran started her campaign in Glasgow East by lying about where she lived, she continued it with a lie about the Scottish Government reviewing bus concessions (Labour ordered the review before they were turfed out of office), and she sunk to a real low by faking the endorsement of a war hero (you can read the full story of that on Guido Fawkes' blog).

Her dishonesty is an example of the very worst of Labour's politics and follows the dishonesty of Wendy Alexander over her dodgy donations which was so recently exposed.

John Mason will make a fine MP - so long as he doesn't wear this shirt ...