WITH less than one month to go until voters take to the polls, the gloves are off and crunch time begins for the UK's main political parties.

 

Last week Nicola Sturgeon was in the firing line for what is now widely accepted as a smear tactic, but by whom we are yet to find out. Somebody knows, and they're not telling. By somebody, I mean Alistair Carmichael, who has already fingered a member of staff in his department but now refuses to name the individual.

The issue over who leaked the memo has itself has become another forum for political mudslinging, with the Lib Dems just days ago attacking the Tories over the source.

It all sounds a bit childish if I'm honest; like a bad game of Cluedo.

But do these things really 'just happen' as Mr Carmichael put it? Should we accept these mishaps as run of the mill incidents in the corridors of Holyrood and Westminster?

Or should we start thinking of a better, clearer, way of approaching politics and realise these scandals and smears only cast further doubts in the minds of the electorate?

The SNP leader isn't the first, and I'm sure won't be the last before May 7, to be publicly attacked prior to an election.

Take Nick Clegg for example.

In 2010 he famously said he had gone from being Churchill to being a Nazi in under a week after comments he made about WWI were published in a national newspaper. The comments were written a staggering eight years prior to his election as deputy prime minister and, in my view, had been taken out of context.

More recently former SNP member Muhammad Shoaib added to the confusion over Ms Sturgeon's made up remarks after saying he left the party because activists really did want David Cameron in No.10 after all. The same Muhammad Shoaib who publicy complained about not being elected as one of the party's candidates for this year's election, having been pipped at the post by Alison Thewliss of Glasgow's Calton ward.

It's time for politicians to realise that, while these very public spats may be what's keeping them awake in the dusty Parliamentary chambers, they don't help voters make their minds up. When one politician is dragged through the mud, it reflects badly on them all. It chips away at voter's trust, keeps them away from the polling stations or causes them to spoil ballot papers in protest.

It's well known we can expect some spectacular leaks in the week before the vote, when MPs, MSPs, and party insiders unleash the gems they have been squirrelling away for months. So what's next? A photograph of Jim Murphy swigging a pint at Ibrox, or Patrick Harvie buying shares in nuclear weapons firms? That, some might argue, is the fun in politics. We can't take running the country too seriously after all.