Kezia plays the numbers game

WITH Scottish Labour apparently unable to lay a glove on the SNP, its leader Kezia Dugdale has instead devoted her energies to a Twitter spat with Ruth Davidson. Taunting the Scottish Tory leader, who now leads the biggest opposition party, she tweeted: ‘Soon you’ll discover real opposition has to run to more than 140 characters.’ But a Tory source reveals the real cause of Miss Dugdale’s spleen is not the number of characters: ‘She’s just jealous because she has not got as many followers.’ For the record, Miss Davidson has 68,300 while Miss Dugdale has only 35,400.

ON the plus side, Miss Dugdale now seems to have more positions on independence than most politicians have Twitter followers. The latest position – that all Labour MSPs would oppose a second referendum – was set out in a speech with her ever off-message deputy Alex Rowley sitting in the front row. Mr Rowley has said he would ‘not oppose’ a second referendum, and now faces a choice between changing tack or triggering all-out war in the party.