The Shackleton Report: Issue 22

war rages in Ukraine, as Europe looks on in majestic impotence, unable to fathom a confrontation that threatens to consume the continent;

the Middle East collapses beneath a cataclysm of horror, the Islamic State closing up the walls of their caliphate with the severed heads of non-believers, while Syria burns, Israel and Palestine limp angrily from ceasefire to ceasefire, and Shia and Sunni head inexorably towards a final conflict across the region;

India and Pakistan square up in Kashmir, entering a state of near-war, as protesters descend on the government in Islamabad;

the Taleban prepare to re-conquer Afghanistan;

China belligerently extends its influence over the South China Sea;

the world barely notices as ethnic cleansing continues in CAR and the world's newest independent state, South Sudan, is buried beneath the weight of war, slaughter and mass forced migration;

the Ebola virus runs riot in West Africa, decimating countries too poor and war-ravaged to be able to fight an invisible enemy;

Libya disintegrates into a Somalia-esque stateless hell;

the leader of the Western world stands helplessly in a tan suit, wishing away the next two and a half years;

a time for great men and women, a time for a great leader to emerge from the morass, sees nothing but despots and incompetents...

...and someone threw an egg at Jim Murphy.

'It's all kicking off,' says Dr Ian Shackleton, of the Glasgow School of Politics and Football. Speaking to me this morning from his office on the 98th floor of the epic new Johann Lamont Memorial Tower in the city's out-of-its-depth district, Shackleton flicked through the news channels as he talked.

'It was interesting when asked the other night if the referendum debate was getting ill-tempered, Darling said yes, and Salmond, of course, said that it wasn't. But are we at this stage yet?' he asks, indicating the television, which is showing Russian troops pouring over the border into Ukraine dressed as random pieces of shrubbery.

'Probably not. What we have at the moment is more of a game of chess. Without the pieces. Or the strategy. Or the grandmasters. Or the wit, the intelligence or the strategic vision. So, actually, not so much like a game of chess. It's more of a naked mud wrestling contest with clothes and no mud.'

While many political analysts disagree on what kind of sporting metaphor best suits the referendum debate, they all agree on where the momentum lies. The Yes campaign is on the charge, while the No campaign is throwing the occasional sandbag into the middle of the tsunami.

'They don't know what to do,' says Shackleton. 'It's almost as if it hasn't occurred to them to suggest that there's anything good about Britain. Like they're embarrassed to say anything nice about it. The Yes campaign have been traducing Britain and its parliament since the debate started, as if the country is Syria multiplied by an Adam Sandler film.

'What have the No campaign had in reply? The Lady With A Mug Of Tea, in an advert that was the Towering Inferno of toe-curling embarrassment.'

After a car crash of a week left the two sides more or less neck and neck in the polls, voters are awaiting Better Together's next move with a sense of nervous anticipation.

'Sadly, it's like waiting for the next episode of Mr Bean, rather than the next speech from Nelson Mandela,' says Shackleton. 'And everybody hates Mr Bean.'

In an attempt to turn things around, Better Together are believed to be working on:

• a written British constitution enshrining Scotland as "a place of significant interest"

• a new advert in which the Lady With A Mug Of Tea gets brutally murdered by a gang of Yes-supporting zombies

• celebrity It's A Knockout, with teams led by Douglas Alexander, Ruth Davidson, Charles Kennedy and Princess Anne, presented by Stuart Hall from his prison cell

• a two-week stump speech tour from Gordon Brown, accompanied by celebrity chefs to transform all the food thrown at him into delicious fresh meals to be handed out at food banks

• Prime Minister Cameron, wearing a ginger wig, in a full-frontal naked Cosmopolitan centrefold

Whichever move they choose, and analysts have little doubt that it'll be the wrong one, at least voters know that we are finally nearing the end.

'Of course,' says Dr Shackleton, as he stares out at the mile-high plumes of smoke coming from the burning forests of the Trossachs, 'the end of the campaign, good or bad, will just be the start of something else. All we can do is hope for the best, and that the worst is nothing more than another game of really crap chess.'

In other news this week

Wednesday 27th August:

Alistair Darling has promised to visit Pyongyang "as soon as possible" to personally receive the coveted Kim Jong-il Gold Medal For Services In Ruining Political Debate.

The award, made at the discretion of the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is given on an ad hoc basis, but the committee in Pyongyang had no hesitation in awarding Mr Darling the prize following Monday evening's Fright Night At The Museum.

The statement from the committee begins: 'History teaches us the dangers of political discourse. The People must learn that their leaders are always right and that discussion and debate are to the detriment of society. Alistair Darling, with a performance of such staggering and apocalyptic incompetence, showed the workers that debate is useless. His performance was like 9/11 times 2356. If every political debate was this bad, it would soon die out.'

Dr Shackleton, like other political analysts, is unsurprised by the award. 'Yes, Alex Salmond was bad, so bad in fact that you might say that he also lost the debate. He just didn't lose it as much as Darling, who came third out of two. Darling, of course, created the problem for himself by marginally raising the bar after the first debate, but by God, on Monday evening he didn't just lower the bar again, he burned the bar, cluster bombed it, stuck it up his backside and then shat it out straight into an ebola-riddled septic tank.'

Praising Mr Darling's finger-pointing, stammering, repetition and eyebrows, the committee particularly noted the expert way in which, over the previous two weeks he had forced the Yes campaign into a corner over currency, had more or less drawn from them that Plan B would be Sterlingisation, and then, rather than using carefully constructed economic reason to argue against Sterlingisation, he continued to say 'but what's Plan B?' even though by this point there were single cell amoeba that knew what Plan B was.

'It was a masterclass,' the statement concludes. 'We hope Mr Darling visits Pyongyang as quickly as possible, where he will be given the appropriate haircut.'

Later, having been told what the award was for, Mr Darling repeatedly asked what the award was for.