AS a quarter of MSPs prepare to abandon Holyrood and AI-generated candidates emerge, the author exposes how both major parties have retreated into managerialism and triviality while the public faces real economic hardship.

Since their election last July, Scottish Labour’s 37 MPs have struggled to distinguish themselves from their southern colleagues. With the notable exception of Brian Leishman — whose ongoing struggle to save the Grangemouth oil refinery has won plaudits from across the political spectrum — the group has fallen into line behind Keir Starmer. Consistent opinion polls predict that most will lose their seats at the next election. By any measure, they are floundering.

Last month, Blair McDougall MP — the former Better Together campaign director — launched an attempt to correct this trajectory. His “Shrinkflation Labelling Bill” will make it illegal to sell “shrunken” Easter eggs without warning shoppers.

While the size of Easter eggs might not have been the primary concern of those voters who backed “change” last July, McDougall is clearly passionate about the issue. “We should have clearer rules on labelling when a product gets smaller so that you know what you’re getting for your money,” he told the Daily Record.

In March, McDougall was among the five Scottish Labour MPs who signed a public letter in support of the British government’s £5 billion of welfare cuts. The changes, which the letter labelled “truly progressive,” will push a further 50,000 children into poverty according to the British government’s own impact assessment.

It is useful, I suppose, to know where the priorities of our politicians lie. For McDougall, the struggle against shrinking Easter eggs trumps child poverty. Families will be “scunnered,” said the Renfrewshire MP, “when they open their Easter eggs and discover they’re not egg-shaped any more.” In the 3.2 million households from whom the British government is preparing to cut an average of £1,720 per year, “scunnered” does not even begin to describe the reaction to Keir Starmer’s societal vandalism. Harold Wilson’s “moral crusade” has been junked, replaced by a politics so unambitious that it concerns itself with the curvature of a chocolate egg.

Blair McDougall, however, isn’t the first Member of Parliament to attempt to regulate the Easter egg. In 2012, the East Dunbartonshire MP Jo Swinson accused confectionery giants of “sitting on their laurels” concerning Easter egg packaging. After extensive research, the Liberal Democrat MP’s 2012 Easter egg packaging report — the sixth such annual exercise — established that just 38 per cent of Easter egg box space was filled with chocolate.

At the time, Swinson’s Liberal Democrats were two years into their fateful coalition partnership with David Cameron’s Conservative Party. Child benefit was just about to be frozen for three years, depriving families of £400 per annum. Tuition fees had just been hiked for students across England and Wales, cutting a generation off from higher education. The government’s austerity agenda, which led to over 300,000 excess deaths across Britain, was well underway. Meanwhile, Swinson — much like Blair McDougall today — wanted only to talk about Easter eggs.

The point here is not that Easter eggs are too small, too big, too flat or too well-packaged. The point is that Easter eggs spur our politicians to action, and the perpetual immiseration of the masses does not. This problem, of course, is far from unique to the Labour Party or Liberal Democrats.

In Scotland, decision-makers devoid of vision play politics by theatre instead. Bereft of ideas, Scottish politics is stale — and our politicians know it. A quarter of Holyrood’s sitting MSPs have already announced that they will not contest next year’s election. After 25 years of devolution, this is a grim reflection on a Scottish Parliament that all too often shirks the biggest issues of the day to mark appointments, wedding anniversaries and the arrival of Edinburgh Zoo’s giraffes. For facilitating such trivialities, Scottish government ministers are set to be rewarded with a £20,000 pay rise — a far cry from the 4 per cent increase afforded to Scotland’s teachers and NHS workers.

However, if one thought the present session of the Scottish Parliament was uninspired, a cursory glance at those candidates set to stroll into Holyrood after next May confirms that the quality of debate to which Scots are subjected may yet drop further.

The days when the SNP could produce political street fighters, who’d earned their stripes amidst the struggle for the votes of middle Scotland, are over. The party has been in government for the entire political lives of many of those now eagerly awaiting their seat in the Scottish Parliament. Their politics have thus been shaped not by confrontation with the British state but by the managerialism of incumbency.

At least, however, the SNP can count on real existing human beings. Scottish Labour’s new candidate for Almond Valley recently won selection with a website which featured numerous images of people generated by artificial intelligence. While the website has since been updated, there can surely be few more obvious symbols of political decline. What disregard must our prospective politicians hold for their electorate that candidates should resort to the creation of AI people — many of them without faces.

Earlier this month, First Minister John Swinney and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar flew separately to New York to celebrate “Tartan Week.” While they strolled up 6th Avenue and pandered to a vision of Scottish identity found only on a shortbread tin, both men swore to do their utmost to attract more foreign direct investment to Scotland — already one of the most foreign-owned economies in Europe.

In a political sphere from which ingenuity has been banished, “more of the same” is perhaps the only thought Scotland’s politicians can muster. Their ambitions as shrunken as one of Blair McDougall’s Easter eggs, Scotland’s political class has never looked like more of a spent force.

Coll McCail is a Scottish Labour executive member.