From the killing fields of Cambodia to the meatball marinara.

From the killing fields if Cambodia to the perilous platforms of Glasgow Central Station, Iain Gray has demonstrated how not to win an election campaign.  It was the image that will define the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election campaign.  Pursued by anti-cuts protesters, the Scottish Labour leader fearlessly retreated into a Subway sandwich bar, before being evac'd by taxi to a Labour mobile field hospital where medics conducted emergency surgery on his wounded ego.  Labour made things even worse by putting out  that line about Iain Gray's war-zone experiences  "Teaching in Mozambique during a bloody civil war... doing aid work in Rwanda 2 months after the genocide etc".  But the first rule about being bold is not to boast about it. The second is not to get others to boast about it on your behalf. 


     The  meatball marinara massacre was the nadir of the Scottish Labour campaign, leaving Iain Gray looking as accident-prone as Gordon Brown last May. The manifesto launch  was beset by fire alarm and lashing rain.  The former Labour MP, Dennis Canavan, and the Labourite actor Brian Cox, then came out in support of Alex Salmond for First Minister.     The press rubbished Iain Gray's give-away manifesto, with its promises to reward every special interest, public sector union and lobby group in the land at a time of unprecedented public spending restraint.  

  Indeed, you couldn't help feeling a smidgeon of sympathy for Mr Gray being barracked for cuts in spending when his manifesto was promising precisely the reverse.  Labour  tried to conduct their campaign as if they were fighting the Tories in Westminster, rather than the SNP in Holyrood.   Like the killing fields of Cambodia, this is rather remote from the Scottish electoral reality.  Mind you, I believe there was mileage in the "fight the Tories" strategy, had it been effectively deployed.   Similarly, the fact that his promise to "abolish" youth unemployment is almost certainly unachievable  is beside the point.  It's what many voters want to hear right now with nearly one in five young people out of work.  Maybe, in the final week of the campaign, this approach may swing the polls back toward Labour, at least marginally. Not that it will do Mr Gray a lot of good. Throwing away a ten point opinion poll lead during an election campaign is simply unacceptable and unforgiveable.  There is no way he should remain leader after this debacle.