I was, for one reason or another, in the Scottish Labour HQ last week for a meeting, and before the meeting started a member of party staff (who is a friend of mine and knows exactly what kind of person I am) offered me a coffee. It came in a newly branded Scottish Labour mug. The first thing I did was not thank him (sorry dad), but spin the mug around, look at him, and say “There’s no imprint¹ on this. It’s an illegal mug”.²

I am the worst of all people – a rules lawyer. I look at the rules and will highlight any attempt to deviate from them. Such a known pain in the arse am I that I got called out for my rules lawyering from the Platform of this year’s Scottish Labour Conference (by a fellow rules lawyer none-the-less) that the Rules Changes portion of Conference was much easier because I wasn’t a delegate – so couldn’t ask questions about them. We are both pains in the arse.

But the thing is – political parties need pains in the arse. Corporate Governance is important and relies on pains in the arse to make sure everything is done properly. Does a political mug need an imprint outside of a regulated Election Campaign Period? No. But should it have one…It would be best practice. We should at least stop and think about it. And if we don’t do this, if we don’t get used to doing these things even when we don’t have to – then sometimes, when we do need to do them, we can forget to, overlook it, or just decide not to.
Sometimes trivially; sometimes not.

And sometimes, when we don’t get caught for so long we can become too lax. We can get too used to just expecting that everything is going be alright; and those that don’t go right don’t go that wrong; and even those that do go quite wrong can be fixed by those above us.

Sometimes – we are preoccupied with what we can do, we don’t stop to think what we should do.

Sometimes, we need a pain in the arse just to nip at us, slow us down, force us to take a breath and think “How could this go wrong”.

I am (entirely justifiably) terrified of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 so will make no further comment than this: I am left to wonder, in light of recent revelations how well other political parties tolerate pains in the arse.

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¹ For the non-political nerds out there – this is the sentence you find on most political items which runs “Promoted by X on behalf of Y; printed by Z”
² His answer to this was to tell me it was actually on the bottom. To my eternal and inescapable shame, I almost flipped my full cup upside-down to check.