Is that helping?

You will all know the joke about Scotland being the only place where a double positive makes a negative? “Aye, right.”  Said out loud in most parts of Scotland, we know what that means but it doesn’t travel well and is likely to confuse.

Another phrase that got me thinking this week was I realised I say “Is that helping?” a lot, often in sarcasm and with a wry smile.  I was carrying heavy bags of soil in the garden and my wife duly added a trowel on top of them for me to take to the right place.  This was met with a sarcastic “is that helping?” from me along with a wry smile.

It is one of those phrases where tone and context really are king, otherwise I might have ended up in the…compost.

“Is that helping?” is a phrase I think Scottish Labour need to use a lot more in any number of contexts and with a variety of different tones.

We need to earnestly ask, “is that helping?” when developing our policies and, if so, who is it helping.  That moment of pause is helpful to stop our manifestos become laundry lists of commitments that sound good to us but perhaps won’t have the impact we first think.

We need to challenge ourselves and ask, “is that helping?” when deciding if a particular decision is contributing to a strategy or increasing our supporters.

We need to sceptically ask, “is that helping?” when being constructive in opposition.  It is a good way to decide if a government policy deserves support or not.  Is it tokenism or is it actually going in the right direction?

We need to forcefully ask, “is that helping?” when we see unhelpful contributions from our own side that take us off message and serve only as distractions.

And there should always be room for sarcasm so I am going to ask, “is that helping?” as I realise I should be in the garden and writing this may only have served as procrastination.