Swinney's manifesto crumbles during Leaders’ Question Time

The First Minister’s first questioner went for the jugular: Given the recent scandals of the SNP how would he do things differently? “How did it all go wrong,” she asked.

“We recently provided early learning child care,” he said. Ah good: knew there had to be an explanation.

The polarisation of debate is the problem, he said. “We're not together, we're polarised.” This was Better Together’s slogan when they won the first independence referendum.

Mr Swinney was asked about the disparity between more than 7000 waiting over two years in Scotland for treatment and only 300 in England.

“I suspect it's because of the nature of some of the complex issues people are experiencing,” he said. There you have it: even our afflictions are more complex than England’s. I blame Brexit.

John Swinney during Question Time (Image: PA/BBC)

Brexit was the root of all our economic woes. We just needed to get back into that EU, Mr Swinney told us. His party would also have Scotland join NATO. This is a curious type of independence.

I liked the look of SWAPO and the PLO when I was at university. The lady in the pink dress who’d asked the question thought he was talking BS.

It might seem that Mr Swinney is up against it by playing an away game in the heart of England. In truth though, it's a free pass. Very few people in York will know of the SNP failures in education, health, boats.

His party wants to welcome refugees and immigrants; it’s just that they’ll probably have to wait five years until there’s a ferry fit enough to bring them here.

“Will you carry on with referendums until you get the answer you want,” he was asked. “I believe it’s the right of the people of Scotland to decide,” he replied, sweetly and reasonably.

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And then Fiona Bruce with a stiletto. If winning a majority of seats is a green light for seeking independence, she suggested, then it surely follows that failing to do that is a red light. The SNP manifesto was already turning to dust.

Earlier, Ed Davey had blamed ‘The Big Banks’ as part of the economic problem and promised to address this. “We’re really worried,” said not one big bank. “More champagne,” said every one of them.

Later, Sir Keir Starmer became uncomfortable over Jeremy Corbyn. Why had he once called Mr Corbyn a great Prime Minister? Did he mean it? Sir Keir explained that this was said in the heat of an election and that he didn’t think Labour would win it anyway, so it didn’t really matter. That’s not what he was telling the voters, though.

No matter, he now wants to bring integrity to politics. One of the worst things in politics is people not being honest, he told us. “I’d like to vote for someone I can trust,” said the woman in the audience.

“When can we expect waiting lists to come down,” he was asked.

“We’ll start as quickly as possible.”

It was like asking the travel company how long the flight to America takes and being told: “We’ll start soon.”

How would Sir Keir improve public services and build more houses.

“We have a plan,” he said. Could we see it? Er, not yet.

(Image: BBC/PA)

Does a man have a penis and a woman a vagina, he was asked. Like Tony Blair, he agreed on the biology. ‘Prime Minister in waiting believes in biology, shock’

Perhaps he could also tell Mr Swinney about the birds and the bees. No one seems to have told our First Minister.

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The soon-to-depart Mr Sunak must have known his first question would be about the gambling den operating at Number Ten. He said he was furious about it. So would I have been if everyone else was making some extra poppy and not telling me.

Hopefully expert analysts were scrutinising Mr Sunak's responses last night for spread-betting patterns. I'd have been looking for suspicious repetitions of ‘stability’, ‘discipline’, ‘strong’, ‘small boats’ and ‘Rwanda’.