KNOWING chuckles in Dundee’s Caird Hall yesterday as Scottish Labour deputy leader Lesley Laird said: “No doubt that you will have much to enjoy, debate, eat and, yes, drink! But only in moderation.”

Party conferences are not best known for delegates exercising health-conscious self-control.

Scottish Young Labour activists were gearing up for their conference karaoke night. In the spirit of the kinder, gentler politics, organisers were prepared to put on any backing track requested — with one exception: D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better.

Tantrums on Twitter

FAIR PLAY to Duncan Hothersall, the self-styled “small businessman” and “Labour centrist” and editor of the right-wing Labour Hame website.

He is, after all, one of the Morning Star’s most dedicated followers north of the border. The week I began writing this column last year, he was hot off the mark to brand me “a liar and a smear merchant.” 

Yesterday he was back, fuming on Twitter: “Just wondering why in the whole wide world of fuck the stewards at #scotlab19 have apparently distributed copies of the communist, Assad-supporting, Putin-endorsing, Brexiteer newspaper the Morning Star to every delegate’s seat?”

A semi-anonymous #FBPE account (the Twitter tagline of the hard-core Remainers) replied: “Because Labour is now run by hard left Trots and Assad-apologists.”

“Trots” is at least an original insult for Morning Star readers.

Booking bother

ROOM BOOKINGS are the scourge of the left — so my heart goes out to the Labour organiser who was trying to find a space for a public meeting in a Scottish constituency I won’t name.

On hearing the preferred venue wasn’t available, he was advised: “But they’ve just done up the Masonic Hall.” The only trouble was the event’s theme: for the many, not the few.