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Remember Richard Leonard, the leader of Scottish Labour?

We have not seen much of him or his boss Jeremy Corbyn lately, so it came as a surprise this weekend when both of them woke up and started shouting about Universal Credit’s two-children cap and its heinous rape clause.

Leonard told a Labour Party women’s conference in Dunfermline that the policy – cutting benefits for families with more than two kids unless they were the result of rape or an abusive relationship – was abhorrent.

No argument there. It’s his solution that is spectacularly cloth-eared. The SNP Government should, he proclaimed, use £69million from their limited and overstretched pot of cash to put a sticking plaster on the policy.

Come Scottish budget day on December 12, this would “help protect women from the worst effects of the Tory Government”.

It might sound like a reasonable idea – until we remember who landed us with the nightmarish Universal Credit system in the first place. Benefits are a reserved issue and when it was time for Westminster to vote on the new system, Labour abstained.

It was SNP MP Alison Thewliss who knocked her pan in working to get this hideous clause taken out of the legislation.

In Scotland, under Kezia Dugdale’s leadership, Labour joined the cross-party campaign. So did the Greens.

Women and men from all parties and none joined forces to make sure everyone knew about this heartless piece of policy and they did what they could to get it removed from the Bill. They failed.

According to Labour figures, almost 4000 families in Scotland are affected by the two-child cap at a cost to them of up to £2780 a year.

The benefit reforms started in April 2017. But it wasn’t until Leonard had to make a speech at a women’s conference that the two-child cap and rape clause became a burning concern.

Let’s imagine the planning meeting. Leonard and his advisers are casting around for something that’s not Brexit that will please a hall full of Labour Party feminists.

Someone punches the air. Why don’t we ask the SNP to abolish the two-child cap by creating a new benefit? It must have looked like a win-win. It addressed an issue that affects some of the poorest women in Scotland, struggling to manage the family budget on Universal Credit.

And it gave the SNP a sly kick, suggesting that if they have the power to solve a problem created by Westminster, they should use it.

What no one thought to mention was that it was too late and made Leonard look as if he had only just noticed that families with more than two children were losing thousands of pounds.

By gracelessly ignoring the campaigns that had gone before, Labour weaponised a cause that previously enjoyed wide support to make a cheap party point.

Abstaining on the benefits vote in Westminster then demanding Holyrood jump in to sort out the mess is not a good look, especially when Scotland is already spending £125million a year to counteract austerity.

This isn’t a party political figure. It’s from a recent report by the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

The Scottish Government told him they had asked for an end to the two-child cap. They can’t spend any more on mitigating the effects of benefit cuts because it would mean making other damaging cuts elsewhere.

The rapporteur, who spent time with people who use food banks, noted that it’s outrageous that devolved administrations have to spend money protecting people from Government policies.

Labour’s job is to set about the Tories for creating that horror show, rather than demanding that the SNP mop up the mess.

Trumpers, you were a real legend...

(Image: PA)

Farewell to Baroness Trumpington, the cigar-smoking, V-sign-flicking Conservative peer who died this week at the age of 96.

Trumpers, as she was known in the House of Lords, lived what the Instagram generation would call her best life.

She hated boarding school, preferring smoking and boys to team sports and passing exams.

During World War II, she was a land girl, living in one of Lloyd George’s cottages.

She worked at Bletchley Park, transcribing messages from German submarines, and spent riotous weekends in the hotels and nightclubs of London.

At one French restaurant, she was so well-known that the band struck up a special tune as soon as she walked through the door.

She was mayor of Cambridge, great pals with Willie Whitelaw and one of the few women who got on with Margaret Thatcher.

She was a health minister in the House of Lords, despite refusing to give up the cigars.

Trumpers’s finest moment was in 2016.

Her colleague Lord King pointed out that war veterans like herself were getting old.

The baroness, who only retired last year, flicked him a V-sign that lasted less than a second but was caught on camera, right, and became a viral sensation, raising her public profile.

The young people have the perfect phrase for her: #oldagegoals.

Taking a stand to stop violence

(Image: not tm copyright)

We are at the start of 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children. Unsnappy title, hugely important issue.

A new report by the UN finds that the most dangerous place in the world for women is their own homes.

More than half of female murder victims last year were killed by their partners, spouses or family members.

Six women every hour are killed by people they know.

That’s why I’m representing the Daily Record at the Write to End Violence Against Women Awards in Edinburgh this evening.

We simply can’t carry on like this.