THE people who put words in Johann Lamont's mouth believe in keeping things simple.
For all sorts of reasons, this makes sense.
The game plan for First Minister's questions could fit on a Post-it note with room to spare for Lamont's shopping list and a policy document on prescription charges. One, call Salmond a chancer; two, squeeze in a possibly-related sound-bite. Job done.
Is it, though? For two weeks now, Lamont has been running a risk. Will voters believe she is raising matters of life and death over the treatment of cancer patients, or will they think she's more interested in damaging Salmond than in improving the NHS?
The second possibility is supposed to be unthinkable. Lamont can meanwhile ask anything she likes.
So the Labour leader argues that drugs are being withheld on grounds of cost rather than clinical opinion. Who is a patient supposed to believe, doctors "or a government with form for misleading the public"?
This is as close as you can get to the pants-on-fire word at Holyrood. It doesn't look like the kind of statement designed to achieve consensus over the NHS. But it ticks the first box on Lamont's wee list.
Salmond is being goaded, of course. But, he knows it. "I'm not going to begin to rise to that bait," he said.
Lamont is the first to say politicians mustn't interfere with clinical decisions. That doesn't prevent her from demanding the Government should be interfering left, right and centre. If they don't, it's "no way to run a health service" free at the point of need.
Why make that last bit? The sound-bite demands it. "Isn't it the case," she says, "that for too many patients it only becomes free at the point it embarrasses the First Minister?"
Salmond is still waiting, it appears, for the Lamont action plan that will fix the system. She's a bit quiet on that front. Pressed, she likes to say that it isn't her job to come up with answers.
It's not quite the attitude you expect from a government in waiting. Perhaps Team Labour have run out of Post-it notes. Surely they can't have run out of ideas too?
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