If we heard her correctly, Johann Lamont will accept nothing more than the minimum wage after she sweeps to power.

Visitors to Bute House will be offered a warm cup-a-soup, if they're lucky.

Perhaps this wasn't what the Labour leader meant with her attack on Alex Salmond's "130 grand a year", his "two grand a month" entertainment bill, and his satellite TV package. She was none too clear, however, about what she did mean.

That the First Minister is "in denial about the real Scotland"? It's a possibility. That he's overpaid? Most would get by on his money. Or that the SNP is avoiding decisions on £3 billion spending cuts until after the 2014 referendum? This could have been a decent line of attack if Lamont had stuck to it for more than 30 seconds.

Her attention wanders. Parts of one statement end up colliding with another. But given the number of policy about-turns she has to bear in mind, it's no wonder Labour's leader goes round in circles.

The detail was not lost on Salmond yesterday. "He's not an economist, he's a fantasist," Lamont jeered in his general direction. She's not Labour, she's a Tory, he replied. For the party opposite this was, and will remain, a tricky charge.

Lamont wants to know how the things that matter can be paid for as the budget shrinks. In her view, universal benefits enjoyed by rich folk could go. She's less clear about which benefits, her definition of rich, or even – someone is bound to notice – the amount of money liable to be raised by a cull.

Besides, as Salmond crowed (the crack of doom wouldn't have stopped him), all of the policies that Lamont finds reprehensible were endorsed by her party just a year ago. Budget cuts were no secret back then. What's changed?

It might be that the political weather in London has altered. It might be that Lamont is truly angry on behalf of austerity's victims. It sounds, though, as if she is thrashing around for any notion – even one Labour has rejected – that might turn a few voters against the SNP. It could work. But where would that leave the people's party?