Well done Douglas.

Mr Smith reads that former Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander MP, has faced calls for his resignation over the "voting fiasco" at May's Scottish Parliament elections when over 140,000 votes cast by the punters were ruled ineligible because of confusion over the voting system for the Holyrood election. Indeed, he has now apologised for his role in the affair.

Now, Mr Smith may be cynical but he suspects given that the SNP effectively "won" May's elections, that the SNP would probably have received even more votes, as would all of the opposition parties, if it hadn't been for the "confusion" over the voting system.

Amidst May's chaos, the Labour share of the vote only fell by a couple of percentage points whilst the SNP's rose by nearly 10%. If it hadn't been for Douglas' mistakes Labour might have lost even more seats in May's elections.

So the real question is perhaps not whether Douglas and other Labour Ministers acted incompetently in the run up to May, but whether they deliberately allowed confusion to be created knowing that their own party would be the main beneficiary of the chaos that ensued? Mr Smith thinks that in some quarters Douglas may actually be getting a pat on the back for his creativity and saving Labour's bacon.