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Labour has been moaning on for weeks that it’s not getting the media coverage it deserves. There have been whispers of a conspiracy plotted by a coven of journalists waiting to whip off their smiley masks and reveal their real SNP credentials. Some have been taken to the side by Labour MSPs and offered heartfelt but only too obviously, collectively rehearsed support for what was, until the end of last week their embattled leader, Wendy Alexander. Others, like this particular organ, have been subject to a tirade of accusations of political bias from parliamentarians and their researchers and questioned on why we would be running a series of interviews on SNP Cabinet Secretaries and key players in the SNP camp and writing acutely critical editorials about Labour’s performance in the Chamber – d’oh, they won, you lost! But when party members decided to include the Standards Commissioner, Jim Dyer, in their paranoid view of who was out to get them, it was a step too far and exposed them for being a party still grieving, still trying to find their opposition legs and a party unused to having to seek out media approval. Compare two days of headlines and it speaks volumes; the day after the SNP budget gets passed and Labour is shamed into looking petty and vindictive by attaching an ill-thought-out amendment to the Bill and then abstaining from the vote -  rudderless and without strategy spring to mind. Salmond didn’t even need to try. The next day after Wendy Alexander was cleared – sort of – by the Electoral Commission of any intentional wrongdoing in the whole sorry anonymous donor debacle, the red tops all but claimed you could get away with murder if you are a politician and the broadsheets turned their frustration on the delays from the Electoral Commission into a commentary on an already tarnished Team Alexander. Any congratulatory editorials rang hollow. For once, Labour hit the headlines for all the right reasons but because of their constant carping about life being unfair, the reporting was not what they should have got. Instead there was a view that if ever there was a case for a not proven verdict in the process of electoral law then this was it. It is indicative of how bad things have got when Labour remains surprised that the media could still be critical. Alexander’s continual assertion that she had been vindicated was repeatedly met with the glassy-eyed stares of hacks who have got bored with her story. It’s recess this week and Labour would do well to reflect on its relationship with the press. One old Labour warhorse told me last week that it was my job to scrutinise the Government and seemed shocked that I asserted that that was his job. If you are not in government, you can only say things, not do things and it is the media who can get those words heard. This is a significant point in Labour’s history and they need to go away, regroup and work out a media strategy. Go ask the Tories for advice for they have played an absolute blinder. Ever since Annabel Goldie first raised the prospect of minority government in this magazine more than two years ago, that lady has taken the principle to heart and made it work for her party. And if it can work for them, it can surely work for all but you have to play the game and not sit sniping from the sidelines.

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