THE political classes all chose last week to signal their contempt for the people who pay their wages and at whose pleasure they serve. It was as though every major party had suddenly tired of pretending to care about what we, the idiot punters, actually think.

Admittedly, the effort of conveying empathy and concern for the everyday problems of everyday people must take its toll, spiritually and physically. At what point in the day can you relax and finally tell it like it is: that the electorate should just leave them in peace to run the country?

Scotland’s governing SNP-Green alliance just seemed to go completely off the reservation as they began to wreck that contrived image of them as cuddlesome and virtuous. As the rail and refuse workers quite reasonably decided to leverage COP26 for their bargaining position on wages and conditions, the SNP’s mask began to slip.

For many years they’d carefully cultivated Scotland’s big trade unions in a bid to woo them away from the Labour Party. “Why do you support Labour? They’re just taking you for a ride in exchange for your money and votes. They don’t really care about you.”

All was going swimmingly, until the unions began to, you know … actually do what they’re known for: securing the best possible deal for their members. The SNP’s mask didn’t merely slip; it was torn off in a fit of adolescent rage. How very dare you hold the country to ransom by exploiting the COP26. You’re doing Scotland down. Stop it right now.

The only exploiting being done here was by those party desperadoes in Westminster and Holyrood who strove to prove their loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon in a bid to find favour. Maybe a wee constituency visit or an invitation to Bute House.

Perhaps Susan Aitken, the SNP leader of Glasgow City Council decided this was her cue to dispense with the charade too. Or, perhaps having learned about Ms Sturgeon’s fashion shoot for British Vogue she decided to match it by going all Marie Antoinette on us: Let them have rats.

“All cities have rats,” she said when asked about a perceived vermin problem ahead of COP26. Then she described incidents where council workers had been bitten by rats as “minor contact”. Only someone who has never been bitten by a rat, or cares little about people who have experienced such a thing would say something so callous.

Ms Aitken, of course, has form with the trade unions. Earlier this year she lost her temper with them after they’d dared to suggest that Glasgow was looking a little care-worn and neglected in some areas. Ms Aitken responded venomously. “There’s a real echo of the language that some far-right organisations have used about Govanhill for a long time,” she said. “It’s the same kind of words. It’s a scapegoating and a targeting of Glasgow.”

If Ms Aitken and her party had been more in touch with real people they’d have known that this is becoming a major concern to them. Glaswegians are quite sanguine about the difficulties of keeping a big, sweaty, working city clean and tidy. It’s not always practical to dress it up nicely. We know that overalls and a donkey jacket might just have to do. But we also know what neglect looks like, and parts of my city just look neglected. The city council has fallen down on its duty of care to this city.

Something of this high-handed attitude was also apparent in the SNP’s rejection of proposals to force large retailers to give their staff a day off over the Christmas and New Year period. This party has long stood accused of holding the jackets for big business and corporate power, but this betrayed more of its contempt for working people.

As usual, the move to let the UK’s richest retail outfits squeeze every ounce of profit from Christmas will hit their lowest-paid workers. Obviously, their family time isn’t considered as important as SNP politicians’ home lives.

The SNP’s annual national conference occurs at the end of this month. Once more though, they will hold a virtual conference long after all of its rivals returned to in-person events. It looks like they’re running scared of their own members.

Lorna Slater, one of the SNP’s two Green footstools in cabinet, decided that she too had had enough pretending to be all about the people. She said that taking drugs was not “inherently dangerous”. Only a privileged, over-paid and complacent member of the middle class would utter something so contemptible.

There’s a world of a difference between rich celebrities and affluent professionals taking party drugs and poor people becoming hooked on them because they offer a release from the misery of deprivation. It’s why you’re 18 times more likely to die from drug use if you’re poor.

The madness of the political classes travelled freely across all parties. There was Kenny MacAskill insisting that alcohol prices should be raised once more. He’s obviously unaware that minimum unit alcohol pricing – introduced to stop those ignorant working class types drinking too much – has had no effect whatsoever. Only last month one of the UK’s main addiction recovery charities, FavorUK, calculated from their experiences working with real people that one in three Glaswegians have problem drinking habits.

As a month of political madness wound down the English Tories reminded us too what they stood for. Emptying raw sewage into the nation’s waterways obviously isn’t a concern if you don’t visit these places as frequently as the commoners, most of whom they treat as unwashed yokels anyway.

And there too was Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron trying to start another war of machismo in the English Channel over fishing rights purely as a means of reinforcing their patriotic credentials. Mr Macron, of course has an election to take care of. And Mr Johnson, like all good Tories, knows that channelling Lord Nelson always works well when you need something to divert attention from other messes.

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