The Alexanders were well brought up. They know their ‘Ps’ from their ‘Qs’ and they know when to shake hands and apologise even when sorry really is the hardest word. But saying sorry isn’t always the same as meaning it. In the space of a few weeks, we have witnessed the indignity of the shiny new leader of the Labour Party in Scotland travelling to england to apologise to her colleagues for losing the Scottish elections and we have seen her brother, the Minister for International Development and other important things, including being Labour’s general election co-ordinator, apologise for his involvement in that now infamous electoral chaos north of the border that made us look like right eejits to the rest of the democratic world. But they were crocodile tears. Douglas Alexander, along with other Labour ministers, stands accused by the Gould report of having treated voters as an “after thought”. he may use the saving grace that he was not actually named in the report but given that the report was critical about the role of ministers at the Scotland Office of which he was the head, if it wasn’t him, who was it? So while Alexander may have looked suitably contrite when he apologised for his part in the debacle, almost in the same breath he was shouting that it wasnae just him and everyone should be made to say sorry in front of the class, including Scotland’s new First Minister. Yes, Douglas, Gould does point the finger at Salmond for bending the rules and using the slogan ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’ to unfair advantage but the SNP was not the party of government at the time, was not ultimately responsible for drawing up a ballot paper that merged two votes or put local elections on the same day as Scottish Parliament elections, and it was absolutely not the party that you and your cronies thought would benefit from the electoral changes. Salmond may have used a system to his advantage and won but poor, wee Douglas Alexander used his position and privilege and lost and then made his sister apologise. Who looks clever now? Amid all of this ‘who-did-what-to-who’, the smaller parties in Scotland undoubtedly suffered and that is entirely against the spirit of what devolution is about and should make us all question what elections are for and what democracy is meant to deliver. Today in Holyrood magazine we lay bare the truth – that the Labour Party, despite its hollow apologies, was the architect of its own demise in Scotland. The fault for losing May’s elections lies firmly at its own stuck-in-the-mud feet. In confidential internal Labour Party papers, there is a clear acknowledgement that in May, Labour was “out-organised by the SNP and that our voters believed our (election campaign) was a London led operation”. So, despite what they say, the documents reveal that the Scottish Labour Party knows that the better party won. Wendy Alexander shouldn’t have been down apologising to them, her brother and the rest should be on their knees begging forgiveness. At a time when we are in the ignominious situation of having the Council of europe investigating the UK’s electoral processes to decide whether we require official monitoring, along with countries like Albania, Serbia and Russia, is it right that the man responsible for Scotland’s worst electoral fiasco should be wandering around the world lecturing emerging democracies on free, fair and secure elections? honour and integrity may be old-fashioned words but if we end up joining that list of electoral shame, then it is an indictment on our proud legacy of democracy and is something to be truly sorry for.