April 1 has come early this year. Into my inbox yesterday dropped a press release from the Scottish Labour Party. "Sturgeon Household Gains Most From Free School Meals", read the subject line.

The only problem is that Nicola Sturgeon doesn't have any children. Or perhaps Labour knows something we don't?

At first I thought this was a spoof, but apparently not.

It was a poke at the First Minister for launching the free school meals policy by turning up for dinner at a school where primary one to three classes will benefit.

Labour's Scottish education spokesman, Iain Gray, complained that well-heeled folk like Ms Sturgeon "will save £330 a year at the expense of those most in need" - or would if she had any offspring.

But it was a bizarre way to start the election year. And what has possessed Labour to start opposing free school meals?

Labour's own UK policy forum voted in July in support of "universal free school meals" which, it said, was "a policy that is core to our Labour values".

Not in Scotland, it appears.

Well, fair enough. The Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy said again yesterday that he'd no longer be taking orders from London and, clearly, that applies to core Labour values as well.

But it looks like the return of the "something for nothing" approach of his predecessor, Johann Lamont.

Are Labour going into the General Election calling for the means testing of prescription charges and the restoration of tuition fees?

Don't they also "benefit the wealthy"?

What is irritating is that, if the Tories had announced the abolition of free school meals rather than the introduction of them, Labour would probably have been accusing David Cameron of stealing the bread out of children's mouths.

So would the SNP, even though they didn't actually initiate the free meals Nicola Sturgeon was celebrating yesterday.

It was a Coalition policy originally tabled by the Liberal Democrats. But everyone's forgotten about them.

The SNP have been promising to paint the green benches of Westminster tartan, as if the only truly Scottish MPs are ones who belong to the SNP. But they're in danger of suggesting that just having SNP MPs in Westminster is a good thing in itself.

It isn't. It's what they do that counts.

The NHS is clearly going to be a key area if the SNP hold the balance of power in May.

However, they will be saving it first of all in England and joining with Labour to do so.

Yesterday, Labour's shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, practically burst into tears on the Today programme over the Tory threat to privatise the NHS.

This is the same threat Labour used to

say was a nationalist lie, at least in

Scotland, even though Scottish NHS finance is linked to the UK's through the Barnett formula.

But perhaps not for much longer.

The hyper-active Jim Murphy promised yesterday to fund 1,000 more nurses for the Scottish NHS, financed by the proposed UK-wide mansion tax, another LibDem policy wheeze.

But, sensing that the nasty nationalists would likely match this before May, he added that this would be 1,000 more nurses over and above any the SNP promise.

Ms Sturgeon could promise 10,000 more nurses, and Mr Murphy would still add another 1,000.

I suppose this makes sense to some but it rather smacks of desperation, as does the promise to speak to the 200,000 Yes voters who should be voting Labour.

Mr Murphy says that each of them will be talked to in person about why they should come back to Labour.

You have been warned.

Labour leader Ed Miliband also thinks we need to talk.

Yesterday, in his first speech of the political year, he promised to speak to four million people, though not face to face, it is to be hoped.

I don't think the voters of Britain could cope with him arriving on their doorsteps insisting that Labour didn't, in actual fact, elect the wrong Miliband.

The parties have all launched their General Election campaigns early, we're told, because there's nothing to do in Westminster.

But if this is what we're in for in the next four months, a lot of us will helping Mr Cameron meet his immigration figures by fleeing the country.