Here's what's cutting through in the General Election

Given that two-thirds of the Scottish electorate are sufficiently exercised to hold the view that Mr Matheson should pack his trunks and never be seen in the Holyrood bubble again, this may have been a miscalculation on Ms McAllan’s part.

Apart from being plain wrong, it reflects a deeply patronising attitude of the new political class. The hoi polloi, they assume, don’t really understand these matters and are too busy with their simple pleasures to care. Keep it in the bubble, runs the logic, and we can do what we like. Only when it “cuts through” is false humility required.

The truth is that Mr Matheson’s behaviour was more likely to “cut through” than other cases involving much larger sums of money. There was no complexity about the basic facts. Mr Matheson tried to access £11,000 of public money to which he was not entitled. It is difficult to think of any other context in which this would not constitute an offence. Small wonder it “cut through”.

Another “cutting through” conundrum which interests me involves the £450 million which the Scottish Government has allegedly “handed back” to the European Commission having failed to spend it during the past eight years on anti-poverty programmes, rural development and other priorities covered by these EU structural funds.

I am particularly exercised as a resident of the islands which, historically, benefited hugely from structural funds. There was an excellent organisation called the Highlands and Islands Partnership Programme which embraced local authorities and other agencies. It drew on decades of experience to negotiate the complexities of EU funding, dealing direct with Brussels.

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In one of its first centralising acts, the SNP closed down HIPP and brought everything to do with EU funding under political control, branded as “Scottish Government”. I can say with certainty that if the previous structure had remained, the Highlands and Islands would not have lost out on a pound of EU funding.

Actually, it is not a case of “handing back" since they have never had the money but of failing to claim it because there were no eligible schemes put forward. It seems agreed that £190 million is already lost while the best that Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, could muster was that they would “endeavour to spend as much of it as possible” by next year.

It is true the accounts do not have to be finalised until next year but the end of this month is the deadline for putting forward proposals to the Commission. It seems unlikely that what has not been achieved in eight years will be turned around in three weeks so Ms Forbes is merely kicking the can of accountability down the road.

The Scottish Government has a woeful record in dealing with EU Structural Funds over the past decade and was repeatedly censured and suspended by the Commission for non-compliance with the rules. Heaven knows what that has translated into in terms of funding lost.

But here’s the question. If it is eventually confirmed that hundreds of millions have been lost to Scottish communities through incompetence and lack of attention to what is attainable, while constantly girning about not having enough money, will that “cut through” to the attention of the Scottish electorate?

A lot will depend on the ability of the SNP’s political opponents to persist in turning it into a £450 million issue of neglect towards the needful which offends people’s instincts of decency and propriety as much as Michael Matheson’s 11 grand. That’s the real prerequisite of “cutting through”.

Michael Matheson (Image: PA)

Which takes me to Tuesday night’s encounter between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak which wasn’t really a debate but a series of 45-second thrusts with almost no engagement over ideas and policies. It was also an illustration of how, at the serious end of politics, “cutting through” is an objective which demands ruthless tactics.

Mr Sunak went into this event with only one instruction: to repeat the phrase “£2,000 tax rises under Labour” as often as necessary to stick in people’s minds. It did not require any backing up with evidence and indeed the programme’s format was designed to avoid any such obligation. Just repeat, repeat, repeat.

This was bound to happen because it always does. There has not been an election in the past century at which the major weapon in the Tory armament has not been to send out scare stories about how taxes would rise under Labour. Elections have been won and lost on the success or failure of that message.

Mr Starmer eventually dismissed the figure as nonsense and seemed genuinely astonished that a Prime Minister presiding over the highest tax rates in 70 years should fight on this particular ground. Otherwise, he might have got his ridicule and rebuttal in earlier.

Those who have complained about Keir Starmer not making spending commitments should ponder how much easier Mr Sunak’s task would have been if there was an actual basis on which to hang his figure. But when the Tory machine is in action, backed up by its friends in the press, evidence is the least of its requirements.

The problem for Mr Sunak is that it is not only what you want to “cut through” that actually cuts through. For most viewers, I guess the impression of Sunak was of a cocky and entitled individual, who interrupted far too much, while Starmer’s weakness was to be just a little too decent. Maybe that is not such a bad thing to “cut through”.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.