All those taunts about “blue Labour” and “red Tory” hurled by Nationalist foot soldiers at their rivals during the 2014 independence referendum turned out to be true yesterday, when the party leaders rolled up to vote in the Holyrood election.
Beset by dismal polling and assailed by a row about antisemitism, Kezia Dugdale, in charge of the Scottish party, abandoned any pretence of flying the Old Labour colours. Instead, she wrapped herself in a coat of Conservative blue, doubtless to the mild confusion of voters at her local polling station in Edinburgh East. Just at that moment, across in the city’s Central constituency, Ruth Davidson, Ms Dugdale’s Tory rival, bowled up to vote clad in a fetching jacket made, like the people’s flag, of deepest red, set off by black trousers.
But while the Tory leader has made no secret of her desire to steal Labour’s clothes as the official opposition, her sartorial style, not for the first time in this campaign, appeared to follow the pattern set by Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader — yesterday, just like Ms Davidson, Ms Sturgeon was wearing red and black when she arrived to vote in Baillieston, Glasgow.
But the turnout was not all about power dressing. Patrick Harvie, as befits the Green bigwig, cycled up to cast his vote in Glasgow Kelvin, clad in an open-neck shirt and a mucky pair of jeans.
And after a lifetime in politics, Willie Rennie was a changed man when he arrived at his local polling station in Keltybridge, near Cowdenbeath, Fife. Relaxed and smiling, the Lib Dem leader dropped the dapper suits of charcoal and black habitually seen in Holyrood’s debating chamber in favour of a bomber jacket, jeans and trainers.
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Take that jolly demeanour and his schoolboy get-up, and factor in his electoral prospects, and it’s hard to avoid a shocking conclusion. Mr Rennie, one of the most capable, and certainly the nicest, man in Scottish politics, expects to spend the next five years rebuilding his long-forgotten skateboarding career.