THE Nige Messiah sacrificed himself on the cross of a media interview on the Friday, and lo, on the third day he did rise again! The worshippers of the swivel-eyed god really do believe he can walk on water. This is a miraculous feat Nige can achieve only because he steps on the heads of drowning migrants.

Meanwhile in Scotland, Jim Murphy hasn’t resigned because he’s been inundated by letters and messages of support. He’s just not realised that they’re all coming from SNP supporters.

The followers of the Murph E Coyote godlet have decided to skip the sacrifice and just go straight to the granting of eternal life to the man who never appeared in a press photo without a halo on his head. In part this is because if they had walled him up in a tomb, no one would have helped them roll the stone away after the three days. And besides, there’s no cave big enough to contain Jim’s ego. But mainly it’s because there’s been a succession of Labour personages like Rutherglen MSP James Kelly – who’s like Iain Gray without the charisma – appearing before the cameras to swear blind that Jim shouldn’t resign because he fought a brilliant campaign.

This does make you wonder what a rubbish campaign would have looked like. Possibly it would have entailed posting out election leaflets impregnated with the flu virus while Jim pulled down his troosers and mooned at Gordon Brewer during that shouty election debate, which would at least have made it watchable.

Labour is divided amongst itself over the reason for its crushing defeat. One faction of the party thinks it’s because the SNP is bad, another group believes it’s because the SNP is really bad. And a third faction holds that the rout was due to the fact that the SNP is really, really bad. The party now wants a period of quiet reflection so that they can decide that they lost the election because the SNP is badly, evilly bad. They’re not going to sack Jim because they need to think about where they went wrong; although any former Labour voter will tell them that one of the major ways they went wrong was to choose Jim as a branch office manager. Jim was even less popular in Scottish opinion polls than Davie Cameron. Just how many more hints do Labour need?

Labour are now proposing to fight the 2016 Scottish elections on the dubious principle that Scotland’s voters will think the best person to take responsibility for Scottish government is a man who won’t take responsibility for his own party. But Jim’s the perfect leader for Labour in Scotland, and if they replaced him with a socialist with principles it would be a complete betrayal of everything that the modern Labour party in Scotland stands for.

Of course it’s obvious what Jim is playing at. He’s clinging on to the post of party leader like a particularly stubborn and suspicious stain, because it means he’ll get prime billing on Labour’s list vote in next year’s Holyrood elections.

That’s the only way he’ll ever manage to get himself elected again. Jim is quite willing to sacrifice the Labour party in order to save his own career, which will make him the first party leader in history with no party to lead. His career as a politician that anyone takes seriously is already over.

While Labour is desperately trying to save the right of a careerist to his career, human rights are under threat from a Tory government bent on abolishing the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a so-called British Bill of Rights.

The plan is being implemented by Tory injustice minister Michael Gove, who ran away from Aberdeen because even the Scottish Tories thought he was unelectable, and Scottish Tories have a wealth of experience in being unelectable.

Gove wants to abolish the act as he is determined to defend proper British values like the following: tearing a fox apart with dogs; scoffing at poor people on Great British poverty-porn TV; allowing royal influence on law-making; cutting the benefits of people with terminal cancer; and bailing out bankers with your money.

Labour has nothing to say, being preoccupied with trying to decide whether it can win the next election by being more right-wing or by becoming righter-wing or whether what they really need is a telegenic right-wing leader with a nice suit like Chuka Umunna.

While Labour agonises over its sartorial options, it’s the SNP that is stepping up and defending the Human Rights Act.

Labour’s mess is such that the SNP are the only party that is organised and coordinated enough to act as an opposition. Not that the Tories are exactly on the ball: Paddington Mundell is the last blue panda standing.

He pitched up on the steps of Westminster in a duffel-coat bearing a label saying: “Would someone please look after this Tory?” So they gave him the job of Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Tories propose to abolish the Human Rights Act but have either forgotten or don’t care that it’s embedded into the devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In order to abolish the Act, David Mundell is going to have to get the Scottish Parliament to vote for its abolition in a fit of delirium, which is high up in the list of things that are highly improbable in this universe – like Jim Murphy standing down gracefully.

The SNP are in talks with rebel Tories to take a stand and defend the Human Rights Act, but the main battle will be between the UK Government and the Scottish Government.

Scotland’s rights are human rights too, and we’ve got a Parliament sworn to defend them. The only way Westminster will be able to abolish the Act throughout the UK will be by treating the Scottish Parliament like Jim Murphy treats the voters of East Renfrewshire. The voters have spoken, but Jim’s not listening.

But if Westminster ignores the Scottish Parliament in the same way, we’re heading straight for a full-blown constitutional crisis far more serious than any manufactured little spat on Labour’s campaign trail in the streets of Glasgow.