If there’s one word you hear again and again when talking to any of Humza Yousaf’s frontbench team at the moment, it’s aaaaaaaaarghh.

They tend to be calmer on camera. It’s frustrating they say. Exasperating.

The new First Minister and his fledgling administration want to talk about government, what they’re doing in government and what they’re not doing in government.

But they can’t because the SNP has been engulfed in chaos.

Every ministerial visit, every press conference, every Holyrood statement, every tweet from an SNP MSP is overshadowed by the noise.

There is no cut-through.

On Tuesday, Yousaf wanted to set out his mission statement for the government. It was going to be a chance to speak to the country, to share his vision for Scotland.

He had a lovely shiny new prospectus with a picture of Aberdeen University Library on the front (arguably Scotland’s ugliest library).

There were new graphics and three-year targets from each of his ministers.

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And then seven hours or so before the First Minister was due on his feet in the chamber, detectives from Police Scotland knocked on the door of SNP Treasurer Colin Beattie.

“It's frustrating, obviously,” Wellbeing Economy minister Neil Gray said on Wednesday during a visit to Dear Green Coffee Roasters in Glasgow. “We're not able to talk as much about the priorities that we're setting out for government because some of the party issues are dominating.”

Deputy First Minister Shona Robison – whose responsibilities clearly include being the minister for understatement – said the situation, which has also seen the party’s former chief executive arrested, was “not great” and “annoying, to say the least.”

The problem for Yousaf, Robison and the rest of cabinet is that things are probably going to get worse.

If his attempt to reset or relaunch or have a “fresh start for Scotland” was overshadowed by Colin Beattie’s arrest, what’s going to happen if Nicola Sturgeon is – as widely expected – the next to help detectives with their enquiries?

I was speaking to David Mundell on Wednesday morning. He’s no friend of the SNP, but as Theresa May’s Scottish Secretary, he’s someone with plenty of experience of being part of a government caught at the mercy of events.

“Ultimately, what happens is everybody's exhausted,” he told me.

“I think, inevitably, what happens is, people are just on tenterhooks for the next event. That's where we are in Scotland. Because so many things have happened that wouldn't have seemed possible, people are now thinking well, what's going to happen next?

“These are huge distractions.

“At the end of the May government – I mean Theresa May herself accepted that when she stood down – was that it...

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