If we have indeed witnessed the end of the Labour party in Scotland as a meaningful force, its demise will soon be reduced to a single question in a modern studies exam paper: to what extent did it contribute to its own downfall? If its bizarre and worrying behaviour last week is indicative of its current mental health, then the game is surely up for the party in Scotland. And it won’t have anyone to blame but its own hubris and the roll-call of clowns, chancers and persistent losers who were granted well-paid jobs in its advisory and strategic executive.

For those of us who still harbour some forlorn hope that the party will recover, its decision last week to publish a blacklist of the 50 most vile and beastly cybernats demonstrated that it is still employing the sort of people who have been responsible for driving it towards oblivion these last 12 years. Barely a month after it suffered the biggest annihilation in its history, we wondered how it might have been occupying itself in beginning the process of recovery.

Perhaps it had been soliciting advice from each of its constituency organisations by means of special Q&A sessions. Perhaps, while politely letting its former leader Jim Murphy work out his notice period by penning his recovery blueprint, it could have asked some of its real members to produce something more radical and meaningful. I’m sure an attempt could have been made to lift the morale of its bedraggled foot soldiers by putting on a touring production of the Four Lordships in the manner of the Three Tenors. Thus Baron Reid of Drumjacksie, Lord Foulkes of Glenhowling, Lord Robertson of Outerspace and Lord McConnell of Haverhouse, all of whom have contributed greatly to Labour’s fall, could have begun to make amends with a travelling minstrel show.

But no. Even as Labour was conspiring with the Tories again (its default position in recent years) to ensure the Smith commission would do little more than allow Scotland to collect the taxes on paperclip production, an intrepid team of researchers was playing Google in its Scottish HQ. And thus the sole response of the Scottish party to its electoral disembowelling was to spend weeks in a darkened room, on a diet of Krispy Kremes, compiling a list of online profanities uttered by 0.04% of the membership of the SNP on Twitter, a social media app that fewer than 10% of the Scottish population even use.

The list is part of a wall of political muzak being produced by the Scottish right (which now, apparently, includes the Labour party) to show that the SNP is firmly in the grip of this fell and sinister cybernat cell. Even JK Rowling was at it with her contention that parts of the SNP remained anti-English in character. I bow to no one in my admiration for the gifted and formidable Ms Rowling, but in the words of Professor Severus Snape: “Gie’s a brek, Potter.” This after all is an author whose most terrifying phantom creations, the dementors, specialised in intimidating the bejesus out of blameless young English people. Behave yourself, JK.

Last month, I was asked by Scottish Labour to host an event in Edinburgh at which Kezia Dugdale would launch her bid to become the new party leader. The idea was a simple one: instead of the usual vapid speech to party activists, Ms Dugdale wanted me to ask her questions on stage about her vision for the party and her thoughts on why Labour had become so diminished. That I had been a vociferous critic of her and her colleagues in the party over the last couple of years would add a patina of authenticity to the proceedings.

To her credit, Ms Dugdale didn’t duck any questions and stated firmly that Labour would seek to redistribute influence and wealth in Scotland, end the absurdity of fee-paying schools being granted charitable status and work with the SNP government to maintain a socially progressive agenda in Scotland. It was an honest and refreshing statement of intent but it was all undone by the silly cybernat blacklist. The only people to have got a kick out of this list would have been those sad, anonymous and friendless souls who were on it, howling at the moon and failing to get a lumber on their internet dating sites.

In a bid to introduce some levity and context to this ridiculous phenomenon, I have decided to compose a few lines on the menace of the cybernats with apologies to the Strawbs.

Now I’m a cybernat

I often act like a twat

I say what I think, that the union stinks,

And I act as if I’m hard

Every night when I go online

when I’ve been dumped for the umpteenth time

I wrap myself in a saltire flag

and swear and threaten and whine

Oh look at me, I’m a cybernat

Look at me, I’m a cybernat

Look at me, I’m a cybernat

And I couldn’t fight sleep

And I couldn’t fight sleep

At night when I go on the hunt

seeking out a unionist runt

It’s fuckity-fuck and bastard and shite

and a word that rhymes with punt

It was great seeing Murphy fail

he’s worse than a week in the jail

He was nothing more than a Blairite plant

On a post his head I’d impale

Oh look at me, I’m a cybernat

Look at me I’m a cybernat

Look at me I’m a cybernat

Making the unionists fume

Making the unionists fume