Tom Gordon
SLEEP-deprived, brain-softened, eye bags like the back of a Doberman, the exhausted protagonists arrived at FMQs today like jelly-legged boxers stumbling into the final round.
After a six-week electoral brawl across TV, radio and Twitter, the poor dears looked too weak to land any fresh punches in the half-empty chamber.
"No it's your turn to hit me. I insist."
"Nrrrgh you. Me numb meat this point."
Still, Labour's Kezia Dugdale bravely gave it one more heave, reminding Nicola Sturgeon the last time the SNP urged voters to reject Labour at a general election the country got a Tory government instead.
What really happened, replied the FM, was that Labour said voting Labour would keep the Tories out, and it didn't happen.
"So my message is vote SNP to make Scotland's voice heard."
Slugger Dugdale kept swinging.
"She urges people in Wales to vote Plaid and against Labour, and people in England to vote for the Greens and against Labour," she scowled groggily at the FM.
"For someone who wants a Labour government she's got a funny way of showing it."
Southpaw Sturgeon curled her lip.
"Here's the thing," she jabbed back. "Scotland voting Labour in 2010 did not stop that Tory Government. It did not protect Scotland against the bedroom tax, just as Labour MPs in the past could not protect Scotland against the Tory poll tax."
But after that haymaker, she staggered onto a line of cliches for support.
"Big team of SNP MPs... make Scotland's voice heard... end to austerity."
Ms Sturgeon even lapsed into Flower of Scotland at one point, perhaps the tune that's always playing in the mists of her subconscious.
SNP MPs wouldn't vote for a wimpy Labour budget, she said, "that wouldn't bring down the government but it would send them away to think again".
Tory Ruth Davidson was more fly, asking why the FM was so keen on Ed Miliband as PM when Alex Salmond called him "the weakest Labour leader" he'd seen.
"Can she tell me the top three things that make him the right man for the job?"
"I'll tell you the top thing," said Ms Sturgeon, wagging a finger. "He's no a Tory!"
Ms Davidson grinned ruefully at the crudity of it .
"If I had a pound for every time she'd said Tory I'd been on her wages," she sighed.
"That was it. That was the reason she wanted to put Ed Miliband into government, because of her hatred of the Tories."
And that was it: the election in a nutshell.
Vote for yellow muppets to install a red muppet because he's not a blue muppet.
If only they'd said that at the start and left us all alone.
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