Does anyone know why the SNP are addicted to superlatives? When most of us would settle merely for pledges of competence in the discharge of their duties the Scottish Government insists on promises of global supremacy.

They routinely reach for world-class outcomes in the delivery of education; health and diversity. In the 2021 Programme for Government we were told that “a range of international experts” would be advising us on “keeping Scotland at the forefront of tackling the climate emergency and ecological decline”.

How about just promising to do our best?

A few years ago the SNP’s ambition was “to create a world class education system where all our children can achieve their full potential irrespective of their background or needs”. Like many other of their grandiloquent claims, that one’s been quietly dropped.

Inconveniently, the only sectors indicating world domination under the SNP have been in annual drugs deaths and the number of their fellow Scots they insist on locking up. We’re not even succeeding at keeping our citizens alive for as long as we once did.

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Perhaps I’m being overly demanding here. Maybe I need to reconsider Scotland’s priorities at the life/death interface. It’s just that I thought keeping people out of our cemeteries for as long as possible was, you know, a basic requirement of government.

Last year, though, it was revealed that life expectancy for boys and girls born in Scotland has decreased by several months, continuing a year-on-year trend that bucks the global direction of travel in the Staying Alive sector. We’ve got the lowest life expectancy in the UK and the gap with other countries has also stretched.

Once, we were known as The Sick Man of Europe. Turns out those were the halcyon days. In the coffin-dodging Champions League we now struggle to make it beyond the qualifiers.

I expect the SNP’s advisory suite will soon be making bold proclamations about Scotland being “the best wee funeral directors in the world”. Maybe we could get that Banksy to do a wee mural at Glasgow airport depicting the Grim Reaper in a saltire. Eating a fish supper. With a bottle of the Leccy Melon or the Dragon Soop.

Try as they might, all of our competitors in these keenly-contested categories can’t get anywhere near us.

At the weekend, the SNP’s Westminster group chief whip, Brendan O’Hara, posted a picture of him and his boss, Stephen Flynn, feasting on a tidy plate of shellfish in Oban.

Mr O’Hara, not normally known for the grand gesture in any of his undertakings, couldn’t resist another superlative to describe their seafood supper. This wasn’t merely a damned fine lunch, it was (altogether now) “the greatest lunch ever”.

To be fair to Messrs O’Hara and Flynn, a cursory glance at the heaving plate of carapaces they were demolishing reveals the full bifter of shellfish aristocracy: a big lobster, langoustines, scallops and crabs. I’m sure it was all sustainable and not dredged by those trawlers that turn Scotland’s sea-beds into ploughed fields.

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Mr O’Hara and Mr Flynn have since faced something of a backlash for posting pictures of their luxury victuals on social media. And, yes, perhaps it wasn’t a great idea to see them stuffing their faces with chi-chi marine delicacies when child poverty is running at 25% and we’re burying lots of poor people rather sooner than they do throughout the rest of the continent.

You’d struggle to spot any lobsters among the comestibles available in Scotland’s growing food-bank sector. A tin of John West sardines perhaps and that’s your whack.

I feel though, that this is slightly unfair on our Westminster gourmands. When you consider Scotland’s aforementioned record in the global morbidity handicap stakes isn’t it refreshing to see two of our top people getting stuck into such a healthy repast? Being a glass-half-full kind of chiel, shouldn’t we be saluting them for setting such a fine example to the rest of us?

See your SNP Westminster group. See your omega-3 fatty acids; your vitamin B12 and your zinc … pure different class.

Like most other Glaswegians who regularly partake of a lobster supper, I can attest to the fact that promoting luxury seafood choices leads to healthier outcomes in the brain department. And so, it’s to be hoped that the SNP’s Westminster leader and his Chief Whip will return to London and make full use of the dividend they must have received to their critical faculties during their epicurean tour of Argyll and Bute.

First item on this pair’s agenda when they get back to Westminster is what to do with Angus MacNeil, their long-serving and stalwart colleague. Mr MacNeil finds himself out in the cold for expressing sentiments that many in the Yes movement have been communicating to each other for several years: that the SNP’s swollen professional wing have settled for an easy life and the path of least resistance in the struggle for an independent Scotland.

In my exclusive weekend interview with him, it was clear that Mr MacNeil was as committed as ever to the Yes cause, but was despairing of what he considered to be a lack of commitment among several of his Westminster colleagues. For speaking these essential truths he’s been assailed by his party’s anonymous goon squad.

Some of these party lickspittles are indicating that Mr MacNeil must be expelled for breaching party rules by making “a public resignation”. This, of course, is nonsense.

Others who should know better chose to berate Mr MacNeil’s disloyalty. Mike Russell, the SNP’s honorary president indicated that Mr MacNeil had damaged the party and thus also the prospects for independence.

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In an interview with me in April, referring to the arrests of the party CEO and party treasurer, Mr Russell said: “In my 50-year association with the party this is the biggest and most challenging crisis we’ve ever faced.”

The crisis though, goes well beyond the ongoing police investigation into SNP finances, over which no-one has been charged. It includes many supporters and campaigners marginalised by a party whose failures have damaged the life chances of ordinary Scots.

In pursuing the fake liberalism of identity politics at the expense of the health of Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities the SNP has become the main enemy of independence.

Hopefully, the extravagant seafood banquet enjoyed by Stephen Flynn and Brendan O’Hara in Oban will have expanded their minds. Rather than seeking to remove Angus MacNeil, they should be thanking him for acquainting them with reality.