So, we suppose we have to point out the obvious.

The conduct and result of a Holyrood by-election isn’t strictly within this site’s remit, but the astonishing audacity with which Labour are prepared to flat-out lie to the Scottish public is, because it reflects on everything they say about independence.

So let’s step through the breathtaking piece of literature above.

Even if elected, Cara Hilton can’t do a damn thing about the cost of living. Her party isn’t in power on either side of the border, and anything she could possibly achieve as a local MSP could already be achieved in her position as a Fife councillor.

(Indeed, becoming an MSP would probably leave her with LESS influence on political events in Dunfermline rather than more.)

1. Labour did indeed introduce free bus travel for the elderly. The word “supports” is altogether less true. The programme is currently under review by the party, alongside all other universal services in Scotland.

2. Again, it’s true that Labour “supported” the abolition of prescription charges. When the SNP brought the policy in in April 2011, Labour voted with them (having repeatedly raised the price during its eight years in power at Holyrood). However, as with bus travel, the policy is now under review, so the claim that Labour “wants to keep them free” are at the very least misleading, if not a direct falsehood.

(In the case of both bus passes and prescriptions, the party leadership has regularly attacked the idea of better-off people continuing to receive the benefits.)

3. Labour did help to scrap a bridge toll in Scotland – that on the Skye Bridge, vastly benefiting the, er, thousands of people who commute daily from Dunfermline to the Hebrides. (Google Maps suggests 5 hours and 13 minutes each way by road.)

It was in fact a policy of their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, however.

Labour did NOT scrap the toll on the bridge which is pictured in the leaflet – the Forth Road Bridge, which DOES serve Dunfermline. Indeed, in 2007 the party’s then-leader Jack McConnell opposed the SNP move, saying he was “concerned that removing tolls completely on the Forth Bridge could lead to increased traffic congestion”.

It is, once more, technically true that a Labour council was the first to freeze council tax. But the SNP made the policy nationwide, against Labour opposition. In the run-up to the 2011 Holyrood election the party was against the move, only to perform a late U-turn weeks before the vote, promising to maintain the freeze for two years.

Within months of the election, however, Labour were backtracking on support for the freeze, labelling it “regressive”, only to then have a third change of heart and promise to continue it at the 2012 local elections, this time for five years – or two years if you believe Jackie Baillie, which we don’t ever recommend.

Labour’s policy on Council Tax over the last six years has ranged from freezing it to capping it, increasing it or cutting it – often all three at once, depending which part of the country you lived in. (The party spent years investigating alternative methods of local funding, and then just gave up.) It would be a brave voter indeed who marked their X beside a Labour candidate’s name on the basis of Council Tax policy promises.

Once more, there’s no faulting the literal technical details. Labour led the government which implemented the policy. But as with bridge tolls, free personal care was actually a Liberal Democrat policy and condition of the coalition agreement, which Labour had to be pushed into accepting by the other parties.

Don’t take our word for that – here’s a BBC report from 2001:

And in 2002, the Telegraph was still reporting doubt:

So, if we’re bending over backwards to be fair, we can say that the first part of the leaflet deals in – well, let’s generously call them “partial truths”. It’s not until the second page that it abandons any figleaf of even a pretence at honesty.

We can answer that one for them – energy production policy is an area reserved to Westminster, over which the Scottish Government (whichever party controls it) has no influence whatsoever. We can only assume this question is in fact either a call for Scottish independence, or for the SNP to form the government of the UK.

Um, they’ve pledged to do precisely that within the next year.

Even though the circulation figures of the Scotsman are admittedly plunging fast, we have to assume that someone on the Labour front bench still reads it, so the implication in this question can only be a knowing lie.

The SNP has of course promised to scrap the bedroom tax on independence since before it was introduced. (Welfare being another reserved power, outwith the devolved Scottish Government’s control.) Labour, conversely, prevaricated for months on end before finally making the same pledge at its party conference in September – perhaps out of embarrassment at being the party who’d pioneered the tax in the first place.

Again, it seems somewhat unlikely that Labour are unaware of the SNP’s policy, so once more the leaflet appears to be unequivocally lying by implication.

We’re not sure what the alternatives to “voting local” in a by-election are. But if we were voters in the constituency, we’d be double-checking that date just to be safe.