IT is traditional in some quarters for columnists to rail against health and safety laws.

You know the sort of thing: it is a bad day when a grizzly bear is banned from becoming a teacher; when you cannot smoke on the operating table and so on.

To that end, what were the “elf and safety” (the spelling required by law) police thinking when they gave the green light for Alastair Campbell’s visit to Scotland this week?

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor came north to speak at the launch of Eastwood MSP Ken Macintosh’s re-election campaign. Given Mr Campbell’s record with the Scottish media,a grand body of (mostly) men whom his boss once called unreconstructed bankers or something which sounded remarkably similar, and his generally fraught relationship with the SNP –supporting part of Scotland’s population, one might have expected a rammy as he did what he likes to do – stir things up for the heck of it.

Legend has it he rents an empty house near his London home just so he can go and have a fight in it when the fancy takes him.

He tried hard to hammer the Nats, he truly did. They have been inhaling their own propaganda too much, he said. There will come a point where they think they have a divine right to rule, he added. And as for Nicola Sturgeon, well, in light of figures showing a £15 billion black hole, she should come out and say “I got it wrong”. This from one of the men who sold the world the Iraq war. Cue the throbbing of veins in SNP temples and 360 degree head swivels all round, no?

In truth, his visit was treated with the sort of disdain a lion has for a fly landing on its nose. While ever so slightly irritating, a gentle shake of the head (in this case an SNP spokesman reminding people that Mr Campbell was one of the key architects of Blairism) and it goes away.

Could there be anything worse than being treated by one’s auld enemies as a fly to be swatted away? Yes. Mr Campbell could have stuck around a few days and gone to Scottish Labour’s conference tomorrow.

There is certainly a spare seat to be had. Jeremy Corbyn, the party’s UK leader, will not be speaking at the Glasgow Science Centre gathering. Perhaps there is a problem with all planes, trains and automobiles heading north. Then again, David Cameron made it up to Edinburgh to attend the Conservatives’ recent bash, and Tim Farron would not have missed the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ event for the world.

But it seems that, when it comes to Scottish Labour’s Spring conference, Mr Corbyn has sprung himself. You will have heard of the Shawshank Redemption; this is the Corbyn Great Escape.

While Mr Corbyn’s absence is being presented as a positive thing, of a sign the parties north and south are separate entities, it looks very odd. Can one imagine Gordon Brown, when leader, not coming to the Scottish conference? Even Tony Blair knew it was a three-line whip. The days have gone, though, when the Labour leadership in London had to pay its respects to its friends in the north. Now that there is only one Labour MP, instead of the train-loads of old, they could just as well send a text message with a smiley face/tear in the eye emoji to show they cared.

The show must go on, however. In a message to the still faithful heading to the riverside in Glasgow, Brian Roy, the Scottish general secretary, tried his best to whip up enthusiasm, saying the party was meeting just weeks away from “the most important election in the history of the Scottish Parliament”. This one matters, says Mr Roy, because “with more power to change things, politics has to become more ambitious in Scotland. Rather than complaining about what we can’t do, we have to start talking about what we will do”. The rank and file will be glad to hear that. Indeed, any message that is not “we’re set for a gubbing” will be applauded.

Kezia Dugdale has already filed her warnings of a gubbing to come. It is one thing to do that in an interview; a party conference is another matter, however. She has to be upbeat and resolute even if, when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning, she feels like pulling the duvet over her head and going back to sleep.

What can she possibly say, though, to lift her party out of its gloom? On the face of it she has a lot to shout about. Anyone who has seen her in action at First Minister’s Questions will know that she is a doughty fighter who pays attention to her prep. She does a nice line in humour, using it to annoy the bejeezus out of her opponents, and she comes across in general as the kind of decent human being who gives politicians a good name; which is just as well.

It is one of the remarkable things about modern Scottish politics that one would not mind having a beer with any one of the main party leaders. Ms Dugdale fits right into that company. She has also worked wonders in putting clear red water between herself and her opponents on raising income tax to improve public services. Meanwhile, she has kept up the Tory-bashing that Labour members expect.

With a leader of this calibre, why then does it feel that someone should erect a banner at the conference entrance which reads: “Will the last person to leave the side of Labour in Scotland please turn out the lights?”

Ms Dugdale, for all her abilities, finds herself in a bind, the victim of circumstances far more forbidding than she could have anticipated (or perhaps, in declining a run at the top job previously, she foresaw them only too well).

She must know, when today preparing her speech tomorrow, that what she says will have little to no effect on Labour’s standing in Scotland, and in particular in bringing those who left the party for the SNP back into the fold. She surely recognises that those lost votes, and members, represented a visceral reaction to her party’s record in Scotland. As Mr Campbell said, Scottish Labour had allowed itself to become complacent and arrogant and took people for granted.

As such, it requires the same level of visceral reaction, this time against the SNP, to bring the lost ranks back. Given the SNP’s polished managerialism, and its skill at talking the talk on radicalism without much walking the walk, Labour simply cannot make headway in bringing about that reaction. It is stuck in the middle with not a clue.

Ms Dugdale’s fate, one fears, is to be a caretaker leader, a Kinnock-type who holds the line and makes the changes from which another will one day benefit. Regardless of how much advice proffered by the likes of Mr Campbell, there is no easy way forward. For now, the SNP is going nowhere, while Ms Dugdale’s party is going nowhere fast.