There is a strong case to consider Scottish politics extraordinarily boring. We are not a one-party state, but we are a jurisdiction in which only one party can win. That’s boring. The government’s key ambition for the last ten years has been to hold a referendum which will not be granted to them for at least another ten years. That’s boring, too. This is the doom loop version of reality, where government performance doesn’t matter because voters hate the other parties more than they hate the SNP, and where we focus all our energies on a constitutional question which is highly unlikely to be asked in the short, medium or even long term.

But if you live by a sunnier side of life, there is an alternative reality. The Scottish Labour party - in effect the official opposition - appears, for the first time, to be prepared to engage in a serious conversation about its existence and purpose. Some of its leading members have left the door open to a conversation about whether being tied to the party in London serves the Scottish arm well at Holyrood elections.

A real Scottish Labour party independent of Westminster, along the lines of the Liberal party in Quebec? Now that would be interesting.

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