It's time...for SNP déjà vu

It was perhaps appropriate for this blog that the SNP's latest party political broadcast was aired yesterday, following my post about the crudity of political soundbites in a complex and often conflictual world. In a way it's a nice little film, but in the final analysis merely yet another cheesy, schmaltzy and ultimately vacuous demonstration of hopelessly idealistic politics, at best. At worst, yet another attempt to deceive the public. But, hey, either way it's a PPB, so nothing new there then.

Onyhow, the good news is that the SNP has finally dumped that extremely cheesy and schmaltzy (again!) electronic-bagpipey tune that's accompanied many/all of its recent PPBs. In its place is a guitar-driven, bluesy-sounding interpretation of the song probably best known here as Bryan Ferry's classic Let's Stick Together, by Scottish group Jakil, and it's no worse for that. But still the same eminently predictable feelgood factor much in evidence, unfortunately bringing to mind new Labour's use of D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better as its theme in 1997, preluding its general election victory. And look what happened to them.

But in its latest offering the SNP seems to have eschewed the slightly base nationalistic message portrayed in the spring's general election PPB - the much panned chap running for the hills to stand on a summit and shout 'SCOTLAND' - which might have appealed to the Tartan Army, but politics is supposed to be about real life, not fitba!

This time round the party seems to have reverted to its message for Holyrood 1997, which in essence was that 'It's time' for fundamental political change, this time of course alluding to independence, because it can't be time for a change to an SNP administration, because they'll have been in power for four years come May 2011. However, in essence the message is fundamentally similar, but now it's time to ignore the SNP's lacklustre term of office, and instead up the ante to the ultimate goal of independence. All of which will avoid the need to proffer substantive policies because, of course, the spending cupboard is bare, thus the free this, that and the next thing won't work this time round.

But the new PPB depicts the same scenes of ordinary Scots going about their business and all getting on famously in a hard-working, healthy and prosperous nation, which of course is an accurate portrayal of what an independent Scotland would be all about. But like the two police officers in the earlier broadcast who patrol a late night town centre with not a drunk, rammy or vomit pool in site - and gaze at the town clock, then at their wristwatches, presumably thinking it's time we got back to the nice, warm police station - most of us will probably think of the real world when watching PPBs and thus this begs the question, do PPBs engender anything in anybody, other than cynicism?

While watching stuff like this these days I always think of Lily Allen's LDN (shorthand for London) music video, which juxtaposes both a highly upbeat tempo, lyrics and visuals with a more downbeat portrayal of life:

A fella looking dapper, he's sitting with a slapper
But then I see it's a pimp with his crack whore*

When you look with your eyes
Everything seems nice
But if you look twice
You can see it's all lies

Indeed. And what is it with the SNP and slogans? 'It's time' was effective. 'Keep on' sounded truncated, and a bit too 'down wiv da kidz'. 'More Nats, less cuts' was panned as being grammatically imperfect, before even considering the substance. 'Local champions' evokes images of the winners of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League rather than the (presumably) intended meaning of a person who fights for a principle or cause, thus again one for the Hampden crowd rather than the wider public?

So now we have 'Be part of better', which sounds sufficiently awkward that it will have people thinking about the syntax rather than the politics. It's either a bit stupid, or too clever by half. Either way, not a good political slogan.

But watch Ms Allen's video, which is a lot more insightful than the SNP's.

*Lyrics censored in the video!