THE distorted reality of Scottish politics is evident in my family’s recent voting preferences.

Almost as one, the McKenna clan – sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters, as well as our presiding matriarch – voted for the SNP last week, then scoured the regional lists for something with which to assuage their consciences.

The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition would have been the obvious chance if any of them had previously been aware of their existence.

Faith and politics are the intertwined ribbons of our family’s cultural DNA and the Labour Party has always been the secular force that complements the spiritual. It was this organisation that did more than any other to lift our community out of the poverty and discrimination that greeted the Irish fleeing famine and Britain’s genocidal role in that apocalypse. It’s simply impossible to overstate our family’s traditional devotion to the Labour Party. They all long to return to the fold.

This won’t happen though, while Labour in Scotland continues to clothe itself in the colours of the Union Jack and gives succour to a Union now dominated in perpetuity by the party that once enslaved us. And so my family, in common with tens of thousands of others, contributed last week to the false reality that every Holyrood election must now deliver while the constitutional question remains unsettled.

Let’s get real here: we have elected a parliament which does not even remotely reflect the reality of people’s lives. It’s a parody where some features have been grotesquely swollen and others reduced to comic miniature. One party has secured a two-decade dominion over Scotland’s political landscape unmatched in any other Western European nation, and it’s not because their policies and leadership have improved the lives of the Scottish people. The SNP have gained such extraordinary executive power mainly because traditional Labour voters have parked their votes there for the duration of the struggle for self-determination.

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The Tories are the official opposition at Holyrood because many pro-Union Liberal Democrats – and some in Labour – lent them their votes. It’s difficult not to laugh when assorted Scottish Tories tell interviewers how much they revile the nastiness and divisiveness of Scottish nationalism with a straight face.

As this state of constitutional stasis persists they’ve been having a right good ball to themselves in which a slew of (and there’s really no other way of putting this) political and semi-literate roasters know they have a decent chance of securing an affluent lifestyle. They’re led by a man who wants to drive gypsies out of Scotland and spent his formative political years standing outside travellers’ dwellings wielding a smartphone.

Adam Tomkins decided to quit after one term in this cowboy outfit. If you were also a respected and admired academic expert on constitutional law there’s only so much risk to your reputation you’d be willing to take too.

The Labour Party could win only two constituency seats last week. Think about that: two seats. They now flail around on the Mickey Mouse positions not because Anas Sarwar is a bad leader or their candidates are all dipsticks, but because they’ve stubbornly positioned themselves on the wrong side of the constitutional debate.

The Greens, who genuinely are a Mickey Mouse outfit, haven’t won a single constituency in six Scottish elections and secured just more than one per cent of the vote last week. This is a cause for rejoicing because they somehow contrived to get eight list seats. Let’s not kid ourselves here: this isn’t because lots of people are captivated by their bivouac-and-cycle-lane caprices but because the Scottish Greens adroitly back self-determination. In parts of Glasgow’s west end now a vote for the Greens is a lifestyle accoutrement, like shopping at Roots and Fruits or having a personal trainer. It helps, of course, if you can actually afford a lifestyle.

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The question of Scotland’s independence or its future as part of the UK has relegated the issues which affect real people’s day-to-day lives to a sideshow. How could it be otherwise when the party of Government knows it merely has to turn up to be returned and who will promenade through the next five years with no-one to lay a glove on them?

The role of opposition in a parliamentary democracy is to scrutinise and test government policy; to ensure that it’s as lean and spare as it can be. It ensures spending ministers must always be whip-smart and that they can never relax. But when the constitutional debate delivers you a super-majority and almost 50% of all votes most of the new SNP intake can take a virtual holiday. This administration now governs by WhatsApp and half of their own cabinet aren’t even invited.

The lamentable state of what passes for political opposition in Scotland was unavoidable throughout two days of saturation broadcast coverage. There was Christine Jardine, LibDem grandee, pointing to 14 years of SNP failure. You say that, Christine, but then the voting public still vote for them in their droves. Are you saying they’re stupid? If they don’t think the SNP are much good then they must be voting for them because of the independence factor. You can’t have it both ways.

And here’s Oliver Mundell saying that the SNP spent the election campaign back-tracking on independence. Yet his party’s entire strategy was based around the Nationalists insisting on independence. These people are either just plain stupid or they think the electorate are. Ian Murray, Labour’s Morningside representative said he was pleased at his party’s new intake because “they’ll campaign for what they believe in”. What else would they be expected to do, Ian? This is kind of a basic tenet of the job description.

On reading each of the main parties’ manifestos you notice one glaring hole which stretches across them all: nowhere is there a specific, all-encompassing and long-term strategy to break multi-generational poverty in working-class communities. The constitution now dominates all aspects of Scottish politics and has made Holyrood a caricature. Only a second referendum whose outcome is binding for a lifetime can free the country from this simulation.

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