This thought has not occurred to me very often in the 20-odd years since I swapped covering Westminster politics for the Scottish variety but I do feel desperately sorry for my London colleagues in this general election.
As I watch the broadcast news bulletins and scan page after page of political news in our papers all I see is an army of the brightest and best of our journalistic talent trying desperately to inject some degree of interest, never mind excitement, into what is going down as easily the most one-sided, and therefore intensely boring, election ever.
Comparisons are repeatedly made with the 1983 contest. But although Michael Foot took Labour to a record defeat, it was by no means the pre-ordained hammering that Jeremy Corbyn appears likely to suffer.
For sure, it was shambles back then and included a manifesto that was dubbed “the longest suicide note in history”. As well as that, Scotland Yard protection officers and even – or so it was rumoured – passers-by from the street, sat in on Labour’s daily election summits at Transport House. When one activist, at such a meeting, asked: “What about the Green vote,” he was told in no uncertain terms by the late Gerald Kaufman, “ F*** the Green vote.”
Foot’s leadership was much more secure than Corbyn’s is today but even so, there was a period in that campaign when criticism of his strategy reached such a peak that Ron Hayward, the party’s general secretary, had to convene a press conference to announce: “Michael Foot is still the leader.”
All of that aside, however, the scale of the massive defeat Foot suffered then was in large part due to the huge vote for the SDP/Liberal Alliance which finished with only 700,000 votes – two points – fewer than Labour. Margaret Thatcher cashed in on her Falklands War triumph of a year earlier with a 144 majority but would she have succeeded so handsomely without the Alliance surge that captured so many anti-Tory votes?
This time round, at least if the polls are to be believed, Theresa May won’t need the assistance of any third party to inflict a similar drubbing on Labour on June 8.
We watch open-mouthed as Mr Corbyn travels the country leaving hostages to fortune wherever he goes, to the widespread despair of many of his MPs and traditional supporters. Does anyone really think he’s heading for anything other than a humiliating defeat?
Au contraire, as we say in Dundee, in Scotland I can look forward to a much more interesting contest than the walk-over widely predicted south of the Cheviots. Here there is at least the chance of a significant change, in the shape of not necessarily the end, but maybe the beginning of the end, of the SNP hegemony.
I accept at once that for Nicola Sturgeon to lose ten or twelve seats, as some polls are predicting, would still leave her with well over 40 of Scotland’s 59 constituencies – the sort of majority that most political leaders would die for.
But going backwards is a direction the Nats haven’t travelled much recently.
Moreover, and interestingly, it is their core policy that’s causing the damage. Sturgeon insists that this election battle isn’t about her demand for another independence referendum.
“Oh yes it is,” says Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader. And it is Davidson who’s thus far winning the battle with the voters. We know this thanks to the ever-increasing stridency of Sturgeon’s attacks on her main opponent.
Nationalist attacks on Tories is not exactly a novel phenomenon in Scotland but when it’s happening because the Nats think that the Tories are hurting them, you would be forgiven for thinking that the electoral plates are shifting up here.
Which is more than can be said for that boring contest down there. You have my sympathy folks.
