The Labour 'we'

I've just had a look at Kezia Dugdale's take on the deferral of the local income tax legislation. My first observation is that it always makes me wince slightly to see someone like Kezia use a title such as 'how stupid do they think we are?'. The implication here being that 'they' are the establishment and 'we' are the general public. But Kezia, as I understand it, is a Labour activist. I think most of 'us' - if I can put it that way - can see there's a slight distinction between the general public on the one hand and Labour activists on the other, and indeed for all 'we' know the SNP might well regard one of these groups as being rather more stupid or intelligent than the other (in broad terms).

But as for the specifics of Kezia's complaint, she feels that the SNP's argument that there is no point in introducing legislation for which there is no 'stable majority' doesn't hold water, because they still plan to introduce the independence referendum bill, about which the same could be said. But that's not quite an accurate comparison, is it? Because in the case of the local income tax there has in fact been a stable majority against all along. Whereas in the case of the independence referendum, the state of play seems to change every five minutes - and Kezia needs look no further than the utterly chaotic internal politics of her own party to find the explanation for that. Until there's some sign of 'stability' in the opposition parties on this issue (and I mean for longer than a few months), the SNP have every reason to be optimistic that their powers of persuasion can triumph. After all, if a woman as intelligent as Wendy Alexander could suddenly and unexpectedly be persuaded of the merits of a referendum, why shouldn't we imagine such a thing could happen again?