My son asks me what someone is like. He says the name but tells me he might have slightly mispronounced it. The strange rhythm of how he says it means it takes me a second to catch up. He wants to know what Anas Sarwar is like.
"He’s a decent enough guy" I reply, "means well but he’s not desperately good, so sort of average for Scottish politics. Why do you ask?" The 13-year-old boy replies "because he’s now the only advert I get on Spotify and YouTube. Seriously, every one."
As we await to find out if Trump is going to nuke Iran, I find myself reflecting that this is how the Holyrood Election is unfolding for me – not directly but second hand. It’s strangely the least political election I can ever remember.
In fact, as I commented to someone earlier today, this is the first time I can remember an election kicking off and the result seems to be that there is less politics. Seriously, I genuinely feel that there is less policy and less politics going on now than there was a few weeks ago. What I’ve heard so far is so boilerplate-forgettable that I can’t even think what it is.
That was reinforced by my son. I asked him in return what he thought of the adverts. He told me that it all sounded pretty good. I asked him to elaborate. It turns out that Labour is committed to fixing the NHS and making it so you can get a doctor’s appointment again. I ask my son how they’re going to do it. "He’s a bit vague on that" is the reply.
A friend of mine is a primary school teacher and a strong independence supporter. She told my partner that she had SNP canvassers up at the house. My partner asked how that went. Well my friend actually ran out of the house and button-holed them. "I hate you" she said, and then ran through a litany of the harm she was furious the SNP had done to primary education.
She was also deeply disappointed by repeated broken promises on independence. At the end of the tirade a slightly sheepish canvasser asked her how she was therefore going to vote. "Oh" she replied, "I don’t think I’ve got any option other than to vote for you, but I really, really hate you". Which summarises a lot of what I’ve heard this election.
As far as I can tell from what they’re saying about each other, the political parties think this is a sleaze election.
With no real direct political messaging that scrapes up much further than ‘we want bad things to stop and we want more good things’, I’ve been trying to put a finger on what this election is about, what it is an argument over (other than personal income). Since I can’t yet get any real sense from the parties directly, I’ve been looking at their press releases about each other.
Which is to say that if I can’t work out what’s really going on, what do they think is going on? As far as I can tell from what they’re saying about each other, they think this is a sleaze election. The amount of content which is about the unsuitability of the other side as a result of scandal seems disproportionate to any election I can remember.
This is of course made easier by the fact that Reform UK is clearly a poorly-disguised clown show. To lose nine candidates to scandal between the time you announce your ‘final’ candidate list and the time of your actual final candidate list takes some doing. That that doesn’t even cover the ‘joke’ its leader told which was just stomach-turning is the scale of things.
But it really feels like, in the absence of any other meaning, it is an election where the seemingly blanket corruption of political parties seems to be to the fore. We have the SNP, which many of us have been saying for many years have weaponised their internal complaints procedure such that it protects the connected but punishes those who aren’t. I really can’t feel that the focus on this that we’re seeing in the election is undue.
The Linden stuff stinks and the Murrell issue is still there, hovering silently over proceedings. On the other hand, no-one propositioned a nuclear submarine captain, no-one has hired spies to spy on journalists, no-one is best friends with Epstein.
What makes this so all-consuming is the sheer mental effort it takes to then add the Maggie Chapman-Guy Ingerson feud/stitch-up/complaints procedure and work out what is going on. As far as I can tell, in the Greens you can get ranked below another candidate, make a complaint about them and have them selectively removed from the ballot.
Still though, this being the Greens they’re saving energy. Rather than waiting for someone else to attack them they have created a fount of renewable resentment and they seem to be generating self-sustaining inward-pointing fury all by themselves.
And if the parties aren’t pointing fingers at each other calling each other not fit for office, they’re pointing fingers at Reform and trying to somehow invent a coalition that doesn’t exist. Voting for the SNP is secretly voting for Reform (because of list maths), or voting Labour will lead to Labour supporting a Reform administration (which I don’t believe).
In an election about nothing, nothing seems to matter – at a time in the world when things have never matter so much
So there we go – good things will get gooder and bad things will go away if you vote for me but don’t vote for him because he’s dodgy and if you vote for him you might as well vote for Reform. So one part drivel, two parts smear and that seems to be this campaign. Well, that and list vote algebra.
Otherwise we’re stuck with parties repeatedly telling you who they really are and us trying not to listen because we’ve got to vote for someone. The SNP are clearly telling us they’re completely out of ideas and this is as good as it gets. La la la, can’t hear you. Labour is telling you that it is just an intellectual subset of Starmer’s intellect-free shitshow and my fingers are in my ears.
The Tories are going to get the replacement for Barlinnie finished on budget and in time – by building it in Papua New Guinea, just to make sure you don’t miss their reductive, hate-flecked norm-baiting. Head’s under the pillow now.
But no! Here are the Greens! They’re talking lots of good talk about cost of living but actually they’ve really just had that one stunt where they complained about the King not paying tax and now they’re wanting to get rid of prisons because they are desperate for you to know they’re a bunch of perma-students who don’t know the difference between puerile stunts and governing. By which point I’ve got noise-cancelling headphones on.
I am not one of life’s natural misanthropes. In fact a lot of my personal politics emerges from my believe and my experience that if you give people a chance, more often than not they surprise you for the better. There is nothing I want less than to believe that Scotland’s politics aren’t really up to the task of running Scotland. It’s just that this is what it looks like. This is where we are now. A nice local woman in her 80s asks me how I’m going to vote. I tell her I might look for whatever looks like a ‘fuck you all’ vote. She wants to know what that is so she can join me.
Back to my kids for a second. I try not to influence them too directly because they’ve got to find their own way to their politics. They’re not going to arrive where I instruct them to so why bother? It’s not healthy anyway. I talk policy and politics with them, but I try to be even-handed on party politics.
My daughter should be a nail-on Scottish Green voter. We were out for a walk and we were chatting about it because she is a first time voter in this election. She asks me "dad, who am I going to vote for because my friends and I are mostly not impressed with any of them". Thus spoke the nation, I fear.
That was a few months ago. I watch this election campaign as if I was seeing it from the eyes of my children – and I have no idea what they’re meant to make of it. Who has the best advert? Who embarrasses themselves least? Whose vague NHS promises sound least vague? Who was least active in covering up sexual abuse and corruption? Who has told the least disgusting joke?
In an election about nothing, nothing seems to matter – at a time in the world when things have never matter so much. So let the list-vote algebra do its thing and we’ll see you in five years.