Scottish Labour, having seemingly faced up to their shortcomings as a political branch office and thereby despaired of being able to win any arguments, have now resorted to what appears to be a final strategy: telling undecideds to vote No for no reason at all.

“If you don’t know, Vote No” is the very basest sort of political message. A direct appeal to people’s fear of change, a call for blind faith in a party that’s proven itself unable to earn that faith from the Scottish or British electorate for the past nine years and shows no sign of doing so in the future. It’s a message that has very little going for it other than a sort of crude animal simplicity.

(Emphasised by the fact that “If you don’t know – vote No!” is the very first line, but Johann and Gordon feel the need to batter it into what we must presume they think are their voters’ thick, primitive brains by repeating it as a PS mere moments later.)

But Scottish Labour being Scottish Labour, they can’t even get THAT right.

The Express, of course, faithfully reports the press-release line:

The only problem was that Lord Reid hadn’t read his script properly.

We can’t help thinking that the No campaign suddenly makes a lot more sense if you work on the assumption that when they say “No”, they mean “we haven’t got a clue”.