When I was nine, my father took me to the most remarkable magic show I’ve ever seen. In a tent, on a windy hill along the north Antrim coast, a magician turned a man into a gorilla before our eyes.

There were no curtains, no puffs of smoke. In the dim light, the man just slowly changed from human to ape. When the human was gone and only the gorilla remained on stage, a suit of clothes lay at its feet: all that was left of the man.

I’d recently seen Spencer Tracy in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and it seemed as if I was watching a Hollywood horror transformation live.

For a child it was thrilling, incredible. I was wild with excitement. Around me, the adults were utterly baffled. Some, like my dad, were completely creeped out. The unease of the grown-ups made it all the more memorable.

It’s been nearly a year now since Labour took power, and in that time I’ve been reaching for ways to describe what has happened to this party. That metamorphosis I watched back in 1979 is perhaps the best metaphor.

Labour began this parliament trying to – forgive me, but the word is perfect – "ape" the Tories. It started abandoning its principles of social democracy and embracing policies which were distinctly Conservative.

Beaten for so long electorally, Labour under Keir Starmer convinced itself that the only way to not be beaten was to assume the identity of the party which had beaten it repeatedly.

The winter fuel payment cut and the retention of the two-child benefit cap are the twin symbols of this rightward shift.

Labour was signalling that it too could be as cruel as Margaret Thatcher or George Osborne. There would be no more........

© Herald Scotland