COMRADES, our illustrious Scottish political parties are off on the way-out wacky race that is the Holyrood election campaign! Unfortunately, the winner seeming all but predetermined in the form of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP has made generating a buzz around the election a tough task for politicians and pundits alike. This has been especially apparent in the recent televised debates between party leaders. While they ticked all the boxes required of debates in which nothing gets achieved and everyone talks over each other, it can’t be denied that they lacked the intensity and drama of the onscreen clashes associated with the independence referendum. You might say that they’re giving mass debating a bad name!

In my opinion, TV debates aren’t exciting unless you’re swaggering about in front of your podium like a true political rock star. That and the ever present threat that victory is not guaranteed. The essential problem with this election campaign is that Sturgeon has left her opponents so far in the dust they resemble a jabbering pack of hyenas wrangling over electoral scraps. This election is a battle for second place, or in some cases simply political survival. Ukip’s David Coburn was paraded on live television as a supposed credible alternative to the status quo, but a man with the dress sense and demeanour of a rejected Batman villain is hardly going to garner significant support north of the border. As a matter of fact, Coburn’s microphone seemed to spend much of the debate trying to kill itself in hopes of improving the on-stage rhetoric.

Similarly, Willie Rennie finds himself clinging to political relevancy in the wake of the horrific Lib Dem/Tory alliance. Worse yet, Rennie blamed the public for the creation of said coalition government mid-debate: a statement that will only garner resentment, not votes. Frustratingly, Rennie actually had an intriguing policy regarding the legalisation of marijuana in his back pocket but refused to play it. This seemed particularly odd given the debate’s focus on raising taxes – something that legalising weed could get round by bringing in a boat load of cash without increasing current taxation levels. That said, Liberal Democrats are about as radical as they are trustworthy, and expecting such outside-the-box thinking from them would be ludicrous. Generally speaking, Rennie might have been better saying his piece during the commercial breaks rather than on the live broadcast. Ultimately, it seems to me that the Lib Dems should consider replacing Willie Rennie with Willie Nelson.

Of course the main event buffoonery was saved for Scottish Labour and the Tories. Certainly these estranged partners did not fare well in either debate, with Dugdale provoking collective laughter from the audience at her claim that she wanted Sturgeon’s job. This awkward exchange seemed to provoke Nicola into wearing all-red at the subsequent debate, as if to rub in the fact she’s stolen nearly every Labour voter in the country. However, that’s not to say our FM was mean to Dugdale – no, as a matter of fact she offered Kezia a televised platform to publicly apologise for her former association with the Tories – something Dugdale foolishly neglected to take advantage of. This proved doubly disastrous when upon being asked by Ruth Davidson if she’d form such an association with the Conservatives again, Kezia confidently proclaimed she would. These soundbites alone will likely be enough to completely torpedo Scottish Labour’s chances in this election.

Surprisingly though, it was Ruth Davidson who perhaps had the most disastrous performance of either debate when she spectacularly fumbled the cross-questioning section of the later programme. It was a performance so bad that our nation could only watch on in amused disbelief as Kezia Dugdale miraculously did a functional job of putting Davidson’s Tory nonsense to the test. Of course, this may have had less to do with Dugdale’s competence and more to do with Ruth’s bizarre decision to shy away from everything one would typically associate with the Tories – most notably their fundamental belief that money is more important than people. It was certainly a strange tactic to employ, especially when Davidson has enjoyed a modicum of success by embracing her role as a convincing Disney baddie. By trying to sugar-coat her villainy, she appeared weak and compromising when her entire gimmick is largely based around being, funnily enough, ruthless.

At the end of the day, with a predetermined winner, this election can be nothing more than a badly scripted pantomime. The action is overly rehearsed, the outcome is predictable and the drama is absurd to the point of being laughable. This is something I find quite ironic given the annual sensation that is WrestleMania is due to light up our screens this Sunday night. The sport of professional wrestling has long since admitted its predetermined outcomes and over-the-top presentation – although funnily enough, this year’s WrestleMania could prove to be one of the most legitimately unpredictable and action-packed of all time. We now seem to live in a world where there is more truth and credibility in a “fake” sport than in the political landscape our supposed leaders bumble through on a daily basis. Ultimately, when it comes to honesty and passion, pro-wrestling frequently succeeds where politics frequently fails.