Wings Over Scotland

There are many good reasons not to envy Scottish Labour members, but the miserable choice they're being offered for their new leader must be near the top of the list right now. Last night's edition of Newsnight Scotland was devoted to a hustings between the three hopeful candidates at the BBC studios in Glasgow, and watching it felt like an intrusion on private grief.

To be fair, the setting didn't do much to portray the candidates in a good light. Newsnight's Raymond Buchanan was a clumsy host, alternately barging in over the top of the three when they were trying to give an answer then letting them waffle on when they were saying nothing at all. The audience was also a limp rag, putting up mostly feeble, long-winded and vague questions capable of inspiring nothing but empty platitudes from the contenders.

(One bloke in a red tie wasted about a minute of the show's limited airtime wittering on incomprehensibly about sport before Buchanan finally cut him off in exasperation, and the final audience contribution was particularly toe-curling. Some studenty girl came out with a half-baked Marxist polemic demanding to know what "direct action" the candidates were going to do about the nasty bankers and such. When Buchanan asked her what sort of direct action she'd like to see taken, she clearly wasn't expecting to be asked to provide a constructive suggestion and just stammered that she wanted to hear the candidates' plans. Even the vacant rhetoric she got in reply was better than the question deserved.)

But even allowing for the difficult circumstances, McIntosh, Lamont and Harris offered little to fire enthusiasm among the comrades, or even to distinguish themselves from each other. The only partial exception was Tom Harris, and we still can't tell if he's serious or just trying to use shock tactics to kick some life and sense into his party. Either way, we're not sure that coming out loudly and proudly in favour of tuition fees and nuclear power stations is the way to lead Labour to glorious recovery in Scotland.

Harris is also a dyed-in-the-wool Nat-basher, a strategy which failed Labour on an epic scale in 2011 and which Lamont and (especially) McIntosh appear to be backing away from as fast as is decent. We know these things because all three spent the vast majority of the broadcast talking not about Labour, or even about the Westminster coalition that's imposing savage austerity cuts on Scotland, but about the SNP.

Of the two most striking things about the hustings, the first was that the Nationalist majority government defined almost everything Labour's candidates stood for. Curiously for a party whose 2011 election manifesto started with "Now that the Tories are back" and positioned itself as Scotland's defence against Conservatism, Labour's prospective leaders didn't have a word to say about the Westminster coalition government that still controls the vast majority of Scotland's economic levers. Instead, each one focused remorselessly on how they would fight the SNP, a party whose policies many observers asserted were barely different from Labour's back in May and which certainly occupies broadly the same social-democratic ground as Labour – or at least, the unreconstructed Old Labour which still makes up much of the Scottish party.

The second was how little meaningful choice is available to Labour supporters in the election. In the middle section of the programme Buchanan asked a series of quickfire questions, demanding short or one-word answers, and mostly got them. They came out like this:

ON NEW NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS IN SCOTLAND

Harris: in favour
Lamont: in favour
McIntosh: in favour

ON THE ANTI-SECTARIANISM BILL

Harris: against
Lamont: against
McIntosh: against

ON MINIMUM PRICING FOR ALCOHOL

Harris: against
Lamont: against
McIntosh: against

ON A SECOND, "DEVO-MAX" QUESTION IN THE REFERENDUM

Harris: against
Lamont: against
McIntosh: against

ON FREEZING THE COUNCIL TAX FOR 5 YEARS

Harris: for, only because the SNP have a mandate for it
Lamont: against
McIntosh: against

So there's your difference, Labour voters. If you want your council tax to go up in 2013 – well, actually it doesn't matter who you vote for, because none of them are getting into power before 2016 at the earliest, so that particular question was a complete waste of time. (We'd rather have heard one on whether the candidates backed the replacement of Trident, because we don't actually know their answers to that and there's at least a chance there might be a divergence of opinion, though probably not.)

Things got no clearer when the candidates were asked to sum up their views of what Labour should stand for. McIntosh said that his party would be about "tackling injustice, promoting equality and creating a prosperous Scotland", immediately setting himself aside from all those parties and leaders who stand for more injustice, inequality and national bankruptcy. Controversially, Lamont also turned out to be in favour of "a strong economy and shared prosperity" (as opposed, presumably, to fighting for a weak economy where the rich had all the money).

Harris, meanwhile, wanted Labour to "represent working people and make their lives a lot easier". We assume, therefore, that the unemployed, elderly, sick and disabled can all go and fuck themselves while he concentrates on improving the lot of said "working people", a category which of course includes all bankers, hedge fund managers, Premiership footballers and chief executives. Up the workers!

(This point isn't as facetious as it sounds. Harris is already on record as saying Labour was never meant to be about speaking up for the poor, but for specifically working people. We're not sure who's supposed to be protecting the jobless, old and ill these days, except that Harris definitely isn't volunteering. They smell ghastly and virtually none of them even know which way to pass a claret jug, for Heaven's sake.)

But the most telling moment of the half-hour show was perhaps when Buchanan asked the three would-be leaders if they would share a platform in the anti-independence campaign with David Cameron. Harris said "Only if it was in Scotland's best interests, but I can't see a situation where it ever would be". McIntosh said no, because it would hand the SNP a propaganda advantage. And Lamont said no, because Labour had "a distinctive argument to make on the power of Scotland inside the United Kingdom".

For a moment our ears pricked up in case we might be about to finally hear the fabled "positive case for the Union", but it didn't materialise, leaving viewers to perhaps wonder what this "distinctive argument" might be, given that all three candidates had already expressed their opposition to devo max, leaving them only the status quo to campaign for – the exact same position the Tories and Lib Dems will be occupying.

And then it struck us – maybe the Unionist camp is going to split the responsibilities, in order to stay separate from each other while all fighting for the same cause. Maybe the Lib Dems (from their tiny remaining outposts in Orkney and Shetland) are going to handle the "too wee" part, the Tories (with their hands clamped tight on the national purse strings) will deal with "too poor", and Labour (who keep insisting that the Scottish electorate are just a bunch of thickos who don't understand what they're voting for) will take care of "too stupid".

According to the Scottish Social Attitudes survey published this week, two-thirds of Labour voters back either full independence or devo max. Whoever they end up picking as their next leader will not. As we said at the start, we don't envy them their choice. Right now it must feel like a condemned criminal deciding between lethal injection, a firing squad or the electric chair – either way, you're not coming back.