There is a 1953 Warner Bros short, Zipping Along, in which Wile E. Coyote, frustrated with the failure of his elaborate schemes to kill the Road Runner, opts for a simpler method. He acquires a grenade, pulls the pin with his teeth, and chucks the explosive at the infernal Californian cuckoo. Only he does it the wrong way round, chomping down on the body, lobbing the safety pin at the Road Runner and promptly blowing himself up. 

Anas Sarwar has done much the same with his statement calling for Keir Starmer to resign as prime minister over the Peter Mandelson/Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Addressing journalists in Glasgow, he said Scots were ‘crying out for competent government’ and that ‘the situation in Downing Street is not good enough; there have been too many mistakes.’ There had been ‘good things’, he added, but claimed that ‘no one knows them and no one can hear them because they’re being drowned out.’

And then, the most devastating line of all: ‘They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened.’ Here was Labour’s leader in Scotland not only suggesting Labour was little better than the hopeless, scandal-ridden Conservative shower that preceded them, but speaking of his own party’s........

© The Spectator