100 Not Out

Doesn’t 100 days just pass as quick as a flash?

Barely have we recovered from the excitement/trauma (delete as appropriate) of the election, than Alex Salmond is celebrating his 100th day in office.

Of course the SNP had set out what they were going to achieve in their first 100 days a way back in March. This amounted to 49 pledges ranging from scrapping tuition fees to a white paper on independence.

Not to be outdone, Labour also counted the number of pledges in the SNP document released at their spring conference and confounding critics who say arithmetic is getting better, they came up with over 60 pledges. Of these 60 plus pledges, Labour claim only 20 have been delivered and 10 partly delivered.

Two things struck me about this.

Firstly, has Labour not learned anything from the election? Negative politics doesn’t work anymore. They should concentrate on what they would do, how they would do things different and not take cheap shots at their opposition parties. That is how the SNP won the election.
The second thing is that no-one expects a party to implement the majority of policies they laid out before the election, within the first 100 days, no matter what the party says. The important thing is to see if the party is committed to delivering the majority of their policies within the four years period or if they were just electioneering.

From where I am sitting, it would appear that the SNP are committed to delivering the majority of the election promises. Throw in the way Salmond handled the recent foot and mouth crisis and the first suicide attack on Scotland, then I have been satisfied that the Scottish electorate indirectly chose the best candidate to be First Minister.

The Labour party did actually comment on the SNP’s plans for their first 100 days in office back in March. Then First Minister, Jack McConnell, said the SNP were planning chaos and turmoil. Well they can’t have it both ways. They complain that the SNP’s plans would be disastrous, then they complain that they haven’t delivered them!

Labour should concentrate less on the SNP and more on themselves. They need to change. Is Wendy Alexander the person to deliver this change? Or is the Labour Party destined to become the Tory Party Mk II. A party that thinks it has a divine right to be in power but faces a lengthy spell on the sidelines.

Time will tell !