Scottish Parliament election 2016: The day of the pigs

This, clearly, was an election campaign defined by sophisticated political messaging. The SNP ran on the popularity of its leader, the Tories on the promise to oppose another referendum, and the Lib Dems on the back of a video of Willie Rennie and some pigs having sex.

It was smart work, with the Lib Dems sending a strong message that Rennie is just a normal guy, like the rest of us, who likes to spend his time watching pigs do it.

These campaigns always seem to produce a moment, like Iain Gray getting stuck in the sandwich shop, that sticks in the memory. And maybe it says something about the state of the campaign that the pig video will probably be the bit that lingers in the mind.

RELATED CONTENT

Heightened pre-election expectations have downplayed the true scale of the SNP's win

Scottish Parliament elections 2016: Ignore the Tories, independence parties were the real winners

Scottish Parliament election 2016 result

Yet, weirdly, despite the preponderance of available pigs in the campaign, David Cameron didn’t show up. Instead, the Ruth Davidson campaign was left to the Ruth Davidson party leader, Ruth Davidson. With a strong message of ‘look at Ruth Davidson’, Ruth Davidson really managed to boost Ruth Davidson’s profile. And it worked, with the party overtaking Labour to second place.

Within 24 hours, Davidson was out calling for a “parliament with teeth”, which, although confusing, is at least refreshingly surreal. But, with media appearances coming thick and fast, there was no time to stop and question where these metaphorical teeth would sit in relation to the metaphorical line in the sand she had previously drawn against further devolution. Anyone who has eaten a sandwich on the beach will know that sand and teeth are never a happy combination.

For Labour, though, the result was the political equivalent of having your head flushed in the toilet. Questions will now, inevitably, be asked of the party’s campaign strategy, which is particularly unfair given it didn’t seem to have one. Labour had a strategy in the sense that a slap-stick character falling down a set of stairs has a strategy.

So while Kezia Dugdale immediately got on with the job of not resigning, the UK leader Jeremy Corbyn sprang to the party’s defence, announcing that he would work “hand in hand” with the Scottish leader to rebuild the party. This seemed problematic, given it is actually quite hard to build anything while holding hands with someone.

Naturally, recriminations quickly followed. The campaign was “self-immolation for dummies”, according to self-immolated dummy Thomas Docherty. Anas Sarwar then explained that the Scottish people “are not ready and willing to listen to us”.

“We shouldn’t allow our opposition to define our problems for us,” he said. Which is true, Labour is perfectly capable of defining, and indeed creating, its own problems.

But Labour did keep some big names. James Kelly lost his seat but got back in on the list, which is further proof it is basically impossible to remove James Kelly from anywhere at all. He’s like a limpet, if you want to remove him it has to be by surprise. He is probably in the chamber now, bellowing that he has a point of order and refusing to sit down.

Meanwhile the SNP marched on, and it says a lot about the party’s dominance that Nicola Sturgeon could present a manifesto centred around the promise of giving new parents a free box and still be almost certain of winning an election.

The policy seemed to sum up the pragmatism behind SNP policy – anyone who has ever given a gift to a child will know they prefer the box. The SNP, realising this, treated voters like someone trying to distract a toddler, or a puppy, from destroying their living room.

Labour, meanwhile, also promised the box. In fact, in the post-referendum environment the box was the sole point of consensus. Unfortunately, though, the pledge was overshadowed by confusion over the party’s stance on independence, with Dugdale forced to clarify her views repeatedly. Labour’s policies on independence are like buses – you wait for ages for them to come and then they all go off in different directions.

It later transpired the Lib Dems had promised the box first, though voters had been too distracted by the pig to notice.

That or they assumed, given the party’s tendency to U-turn, that the Lib Dem box would involve some sort of hideous surprise. You would expect stuff to help your baby but then, following a change of mind from the party membership, find it packed full of live bees.

Still though, messaging dominated. Nicola Sturgeon, presumably taken by Willie Rennie’s efforts to ‘send a message in pictorial terms’, wasted no time in gathering her new MSPs to stand symbolically in front of some giant, malevolent water horses.

To be honest, it was not immediately obvious what message Sturgeon was trying to send by getting the new SNP members in front of the Kelpies, though it was presumably not an effort to highlight similarities between the SNP and a shapeshifting demon that uses deception to drown those who are lost.

But maybe that is reading too much into it. Maybe the stunt had no underlying meaning or substance, maybe it was just about appearances. But then, what sort of message would that send?