Douglas Alexander and Hopper

Forget Keyser Soze in ‘The Usual Suspects’, for my money Kevin Spacey’s real tour de force is the part of Hopper, the megalomaniac leader of the grasshoppers, in Disney Pixar’s ‘A Bug’s Life’.

I imagine that those of you with fairly young children are familiar with this multi-layered tale of insect oppression, teamwork and the benefit to communities of harnessing modern technology (but use it wisely, kids, etc.); for those who aren’t, well, “it’s a circle of life kinda thing.”

When Princess Atta, second-in-command of the ant colony, stammers that she isn’t responsible for a recent debacle, Hoppper, forestalls her: “First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.” 

The protests of Des Browne, Douglas Alexander and the PM himself, that the buttock-clenchingly embarrassing pigs’ mess that was made of the Scottish Elections last year ‘wisnae their fault’ will fall on deaf ears. Only the Scotland Office was able to take the final decisions: if it had all gone swimmingly, would they have been queuing up to share the plaudits?

I doubt it. 

It would appear that a cartoon cricket has a better understanding of what leadership entails than some of our most senior politicians.