WHAT is in a slogan? I ask because we are being bombarded with the election slogans of all political parties.

There is a saying among political campaigners that it is only when your sick of repeating the message that the people start to hear it.

Some of them are very good, very clever. It used to be on billboards and the Conservatives were rather good at it. Remember the ‘Labour isn’t working’, or the Tony Blair one with the red eyes. Memorable.

Others are tedious and tiresome, like those with one politician having another in their pockets. Usually the SNP leader with the Labour leader safely tucked up.

When they have to be more specific it becomes a bit more tricky. Like ‘We send the EU £350m a week. Let’s fund the NHS instead’.

That is a bit easier to check and dismantle and ultimately expose it as a lie.

So, the advertising gurus employed by the parties stick to tried and tested vague messages as though they are selling crisps or cars. On the face of it they are hard to disagree with.

Get Brexit Done, the Conservatives tell us. Very good. But how? What it says is ‘we know you are fed up with this going on and on, so vote for us and it will all come to a stop’.

Except it won’t, will it? There are years of wrangling still to come and will it be better or worse? Who cares, let’s just get it done, is the message.

‘It’s time to choose our own future’ is the SNP slogan, usually with Boris Johnson lurking. Well, who would want someone else choosing their future for them?

But the recent attempts at choosing our own future is why we are this mess. Choosing our future in the 2014 independence referendum didn’t settle anything and the 2016 Brexit vote certainly didn’t either.

Labour tells us ‘It’s time for real change’. Well, who would want pretendy change?

Labour has to steer away from Brexit and independence but it’s being out-muscled on both fronts by other parties.

The LibDems are simply saying ‘Stop Brexit’, just like the protesters we hear shouting over the outside broadcast news reports from Westminster.

Okay. Stop Brexit and then what? Renege on promises that were previously set in stone?

We will hear these slogans shoehorned into answers to interview questions and speeches on the campaign trail. Remember the ‘Take back control’ every other sentence during the Brexit television debates?

‘For the many, not the few’ was becoming the most used phrase during the last election as Labour politicians blurted it out at every opportunity. And the SNP will add ‘Scotland’s voice must be heard’, to every utterance.

A lot of time, effort and money goes into choosing these slogans.

They are designed to stop the voters thinking too much about the detail and reduce choices down to a statement and a negative perception of the alternatives.

It is our task as voters to look behind the slogans and ask about the detail. And that’s a lot more challenging than just repeating a catchphrase ad nauseam.

I’m sick of slogans. So, I’ll end with this: ‘Nobody Knows Glasgow Better’.