FOR a socially-distanced chamber, Holyrood managed to generate quite a racket at FMQs yesterday.
There were jeers and cheers, groans and applause, tuts and clucks, and even a bizarre chorus of “allegedly” from the SNP benches at one allegation they didn’t like.
And above it all, there was a whistle – the thin, rising cry of a political kettle coming to the boil.
Inaudible to the human ear, it nevertheless tingled through every MSP, making fingers drum, hearts pump and mouths dry.
Alex Salmond is slouching towards Committee Room 1 today, and he’s bringing doom to Nicola Sturgeon.
Or so the opposition pray, at any rate.
As a warm-up, Tory leader Ruth Davidson accused Ms Sturgeon of high crimes and shenanigans over Mr Salmond’s evidence to the inquiry named in his honour.
All the best bits, where he accuses his successor of misleading parliament, had been snipped out on the advice of the Crown Office, she complained.
What are we going to read on the loo now?
“Does the First Minister understand why, to the public, it looks like a cover-up when the exact evidence that has been redacted is the most damaging to her personally?” she said.
Ms Sturgeon gave Ms Davidson the soundbite she’d been fishing for.
“It is not a cover-up,” she said.
Ms Davidson grinned. Right lads, get that on Twitter pronto.
But then the FM eclipsed it with an oven-ready soundbite of her own.
Mr Salmond, she suggested, was ready to sacrifice the justice system “on the altar of the ego of one man” in his fight with the Government.
She was shocked – shocked – that she’d been in the company of a reckless egomaniac all these years.
If only there had been a clue.
“People can see the First Minister’s deflection for what it is,” Ms Davidson sniffed. “Just answer the questions.”
Ha! You thought that was a deflection?
Ms Sturgeon reached for her ermine comfort blanket.
“Ruth Davidson wants to lecture the rest of us about democratic integrity.
“That is the same Ruth Davidson who is about to depart from this elected institution, dodge an election, and take a seat in the unelected House of Lords, where she will pursue a political career at the taxpayer’s expense and never have to ask voters for their permission ever again.”
Baroness Cheerio glowered. Mr Salmond is not the only ego in town.
Labour’s Jackie Baillie grilled Ms Sturgeon over a possible Government leak of a female complainer’s name to the Salmond camp in 2018.
“There is something rotten at the core of the SNP, and it is poisoning our democratic institutions,” she railed. “Outrageous!” said ministers.
John Swinney, who is a tip-top tutter, tutted like a trooper.
“This is not just about Alex Salmond,” Ms Baillie carried on.
“And it is not even just about the internal problems of the SNP: this is about the treatment of women in the future.
"So, what is the First Minister going to do to make it right?”
Ms Sturgeon didn’t say what she’d do to fix it, but certainly looked like she wanted to sort out Ms Baillie.
“What is poisoning our democratic institutions,” shot back the FM, “is politicians standing up and hurling assertions and accusations without a shred of evidence to back them up”.
The SNP’s Christine Grahame later brought up gardening, declaring it to be “good for the soul”.
Ms Sturgeon, who reportedly failed her Metaphysics O level, was briefly discombobulated.
“I am not sure that my soul is yet quite so troubled as to require me to take to the garden,” she stuttered, earning the opprobrium of several chlorophyll-stained colleagues.
“My apologies to gardeners and horticulturists. I will move on before I get myself into deeper trouble.”
A bit too late for that, I fear
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