Holy-rude! Our MSPs really need to grow up
OH, WHAT larks. What japes. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny,’ you can hear Labour’s Kezia Dugdale remarking to Lib Dem colleague Willie Rennie, ‘if you said “maw” to Prince Charles?’
About as funny as the third session of a Holyrood subordinate legislation committee, I’d say. That Rennie’s remark – ‘What did you get your maw for her birthday?’ to Prince Charles at the Kirking of the Parliament ceremony – saw him hailed ‘a hero’ by the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, who later stumped up £100 for the bet, gives grounds for the greatest Scottish cringe since Ally MacLeod confidently declared in 1978 that Scotland was the greatest football team in the world.
Look, don’t get me wrong. I quite like that the Scottish party leaders actually get along with each other. There is banter, jokes and a certain amount of bonhomie that you just wouldn’t find in Westminster. It speaks to who we are as a country – intimate, tolerant, always willing to use humour as a shorthand even with people we disagree with – and it says a lot about how the mood of a parliament can change when its three most powerful figures are women.
One of my favourite lighter moments in the Scottish parliament came before First Ministers’ Questions in January when Sturgeon, Davidson and Dugdale all tweeted each other about abandoning FMQs to watch Andy Murray in the semi-final of the Australian Open in the First Minister’s office.
Westminster commentators looked on mournfully, remarking wistfully that never in a million years would David Cameron and Ed Miliband have entered into such a light-hearted exchange.
While Westminster takes pride in dividing itself down vicious tribal lines, Holyrood feels friendly. Less formal. More human, somehow.
But there is a time and a place for these things. And I’m not sure that the Kirking of the Parliament, in front of Prince Charles, on one of those rare occasions when the eyes not just of Scotland but the rest of the UK are upon you, is the best place for it. Too much inward-looking chumminess can lead to blurred lines, daft ideas and cringe-worthy in-jokes that rarely translate to the wider world.
It’s the sort of school prank you might find hilarious on the final day of term, then spend the whole of the holidays biting your nails in embarrassment over.
I feel similarly about some of the stunty, look-at-me antics of MSPs as they were sworn in this week. While the SNP’s Humza Yousaf making his oath in Urdu while wearing a kilt felt like a genuine expression of his culture and background, the bizarre clenched-fist salute given by 21-year-old Green MSP Ross Greer seemed little more than empty schoolboy posturing.
Angela Constance meanwhile, who wore a tartan confection so eye-watering she looked as though she’d been dragged through a Royal Mile gift shop backwards, could only have done it to distract from her dreadful record as Education Secretary.
Folks, I’m sorry to break it to you, but we don’t really care for this sort of ego-stroking ephemera.
We’re far more interested in watching you get your head down and get on with proving you’re up to the job.
The Scottish parliament is no longer new. It has been in existence since 1999. Were it a human being it would be able to vote, drive, donate blood and move into its own flat. Isn’t it time its occupants started acting like grown-ups, too?