THIS weekend’s Scottish Labour conference in Dundee is the usual feast of backstabbing and infighting, with Corbynistas around Richard Leonard girding themselves for an ambush by the Sarwar-Dugdale continuity army. A handy way to gauge the paranoia is to count how many people spurn the autocue. Unspun hears one politician was so twitchy last year they refused to use it because they feared a plot to change their speech. Comrades, please!

THE big stushie at conference was over a vote on EU single market membership. Party and union bosses who didn’t like the idea made sure their own bland statement will go to a vote first to thwart it. “It’s all about unity,” a senior official reassured the media in a late-night bar as news of the wheeze broke. At which point a beaming Corbynista rocked up and gave the trade union view: “The forces of darkness have been crushed tonight! We won, they lost!”

JUST before politicians appear on TV or radio, they are asked to “say a few words for volume” to test the microphone. Most recall their lunch, or how they travelled to the studio. But a broadcasting mole tells Unspun that Alex Salmond has been gently mocking himself and his show on Kremlin TV. Asked to say a few words recently, the former FM replied: “Alex Salmond, currently paid in roubles.”

ONE of Mr Salmond’s protegees has been showing what she learned from ‘El Presidente’. On Pienaar’s Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live, Hannah Barbell was asked if she wanted to lead the SNP, a question most politicians duck with false modesty. Not the Livingston MP. “Yeah, one day I’d love to be the president of an independent Scotland”. Jon Pienaar said she deserved an award for candour. But has she told her old boss she wants the job he craves?

SENSING Ms Bardell was on a roll, Mr Pienaar then brought up Mr Salmond’s chat show. As a former TV producer herself, could she ever “imagine ending up on the Kremlin payroll?” Her candour continued. “Me personally? No. It’s just not a choice I think I would make.” It seems the pupil could now teach the master a few things.

NICOLA Sturgeon and her troops marked World Book Day by naming their must-reads for 2018. The FM chose last year’s Irish epic The Heart’s Invisible Furies. But some choices were less contemporary. Dundee West MP Chris Law plumped for 1970 space cadet classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Its non-conformist message put him in mind of “independence campaigners in Catalonia”. In fact, all round the world “we are seeing a groundswell of people refusing to obey the status quo and powerful”. Just not in the regimented SNP.

MEANWHILE Highland swot Kate Forbes chose Anne of Green Gables for some reason. “Anne is a stubbornly honest, single-minded girl who fights for what she believes in,” said the uber-ambitious aide to John Swinney. “I suppose that I have always seen something of myself in her,” she mused on. “I love the strong women in these books who sacrificed a lot, but never their principles of integrity, faith and compassion.” Enough already! We get it.