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“NEVER trust the SNP”. That’s what my Da used to say.

He was a Labour man, and the right kind of Labour man.

He was kind and gentle and compassionate – compassion being what I think should be at the root of any political thinking.

In the 1980s, a million years ago, back when Michael Jackson was alive, we would watch Question Time together – but the show we watched then has nothing in common with the hashtag-daubed pantomime it’s become these days.

I was a wee boy, so I had little understanding of the subjects discussed. But I was a keen wrestling fan, so I had the innate ability to get a sense of who the goodies were and who the baddies were. Labour were the goodies, the babyfaces. The Tories were the baddies, the heels.

And Thatcher was a skinny, female, scarier Giant Haystacks.

What I remember most about Question Time back then was John Prescott. In those days, he was a big, shabby man, but he flung lightning bolts of righteous working-class anger at quivering Tories like some north of England Zeus.

He was heroic. I’d see him bellow about fairness, about compassion – and I’d see a satisfied smile on my Da’s face. This was what Labour were all about, I understood.

But Prescott, for me, represents the transformation of the Labour Party into this weird shell of a thing we’re left with these days.

Prescott, the hero, soon had a nice suit and a weird smile and a gentle voice. He’d actually combed his hair. He’d become a man with a career.

Aside from a brief flash of the warrior of old (like when he stuck a beautiful left jab on the dish of that guy who egged him), there was nothing left of the impression he’d once made. He’d sold out.

He’d sold out for power. They all had, pretty much. A simplification, sure, but painful regardless.

But we got rid of the Tories, they’d smile, sharpening their bombs for illegal invasions of foreign nations.

And I’d think: “No, you got rid of yourselves”. And: “Why do you need to sharpen a bomb?”

Which brings us to now – this weird general election one year on from the referendum. I wanted independence because I sincerely believed that an independent Scotland would see a new Scottish Labour Party, rebooted and rerooted in genuine Labour philosophies.

Also because I wanted a big party and was looking forward to seeing the expression on David Cameron’s big round bin-lid of a face.

But independence didn’t happen, so we’re back to voting for the best of a kinda-depressing bunch.

For me it’s SNP. Sorry, Da. I wish I could vote Labour. I really do. See, I like Ed Miliband. He seems like a good, smart guy cursed with the face of a character from the Beano.

And I feel for Jim Murphy. Sure, he talks with all the confidence of a guy making a speech at a gangster’s wedding and he looks a bit like the ghost of a coathanger – but I saw him with his family at the wrestling and he seemed a lovely man and dad.

Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, just seems like a serious individual. A proper, clever politician, like somebody from Question Time back in the olden days.

But she also looks like she’d kick off her shoes and dance in her American tan tights at a bowling club function if Whitney came on.

My local MP is Willie Bain. No harm to the guy, but I’d rather vote for a robot programmed to kick me between the legs every morning than a North Glasgow MP who voted for the welfare cap.

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But I expect he’ll get back in, mainly because of that “Don’t trust the SNP” thing that the old yins still believe in. The harsh reality is that it isn’t even a question of trust with Labour.

We don’t actually have a Scottish Labour Party. They come off as a weird bunch of frightened animatronics, The Stepford Socialists. Are they baddies? Of course not. Are they goodies? Honestly, who can tell?

When my Da said: “Don’t trust the SNP”, it was because he hated the Tories. I don’t think he ever forgave the SNP for joining with the Tories to bring down the Labour government in 1979.

My Da had a long memory, you see. He knew not only what things were, but where they came from. He believed that the origins of these things mattered.

I wish this Scottish Labour Party were even a little bit like him.