Kitten

On the evening of Saturday, 7th December 2013, the Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP said kitten, and the world changed forever.

In an intellectually-coherent and devastatingly powerful rebuttal to the argument that staying in the UK as a form of "solidarity" with the poor of England doesn't work because the populous south of England keeps voting for governments that continually widen the gap between rich and poor in Scotland as well as in England, Alexander explained that things would be totally different in future because of kitten.

And in a minutely-detailed and highly plausible prospectus, Alexander pledged that Labour would transform the governance of Scotland after a No vote by doing kitten.

The Scottish press were understandably wonderstruck.  Editorials were united in declaring that kitten was a game-changer, and had opened up a "new phase" in the referendum campaign.

Scotland on Sunday's Kenny Farquharson noted that, while No voters constitute a fixed point in space/time and have effectively already cast their ballots, Yes voters are entirely different and are now likely to drift away in huge numbers due to the potency of kitten.  "It's no great surprise to hear Scot Nats dismiss kitten - the very fact that they're Scot Nats means that they don't understand the emotional pull of kitten.  But their own voters do feel the pull, and that disconnect could prove fatal for Yes."

Faced with imminent calamity, rattled SNP chiefs hurriedly dreamed up puppy as a response to kitten.  After being told of this, anti-independence campaign figurehead Alistair Darling could only shake his head, more in anger than in sorrow.  "Puppy?  Puppy?  PUPPY?!  Is that it?  The SNP have had 79 years to come up with a case for independence, and it's puppy???  This just won't cut it with the people of Scotland, I'm afraid.  They want facts, they want details, they want a comprehensive explanation for the origins of the universe.  I'm very, very angry about puppy."

A blustering Alex Salmond was reduced to asking where Mr Darling's positive case for the union was, which provoked a degree of incredulity among the Scottish press.  "Quite simply, it's no longer good enough for the Nats to complain that we haven't seen a positive case for the union yet," explained Farquharson.  "We now have kitten and it's sensational.  The SNP's credibility depends upon acknowledging that fact.  Once they've accepted the indisputable premise of kitten, then perhaps they'll be worth listening to again, and we can at last have a grown-up debate about independence."

Asked for a comment on puppy, Farquharson rolled his eyes to the heavens and muttered "for the love of Jesus".