Grandstanding of the lowest order

LATELY, the SNP has been beseeching those very many of us in the No camp to take the latest iteration of its moribund independence campaign seriously.

It is impossible to square that with its puerile grandstanding in Parliament yesterday.

And let us be clear, it was a stagemanaged stunt rather than some spontaneous cri de coeur over a genuine democratic outrage.

It has since emerged that SNP members were issued with a ‘cheat sheet’ of points of order with which to make trouble during the Commons’ consideration of Lords’ Brexit amendments.

This list extended to marking where they were to insert outrage/disappointment. The jibe that Nationalist MPs are issued with their opinions by the party whips on the way in to the chamber may contain more than a grain of truth.

Before Ian Blackford rose to antagonise Speaker John Bercow, MP Pete Wishart – lately trying to comport himself as a statesman since his majority was slashed to 21 – tweeted: ‘I’d be watching PMQs if I were you…’

Seems Mr Wishart is neither a statesman nor, seemingly, a man who can keep a stunt secret.

So out they trooped, tieless Angus MacNeil and Mhairi Black, in training shoes, gesticulating thuggishly at the Government benches.

This pantomime is supposed to be about a Westminster power grab and ‘Scotland’s voice not being heard’ on Brexit.

The ‘power grab’ amounts to a few obscure powers residing temporarily with Westminster, while a slew of important controls being returned from the EU after Brexit accrue to Holyrood (while the pro-EU SNP wants to hand everything back to distant Brussels.)

And with the SNP’s rabble showing off on the lawn outside Westminster, how is Scotland’s voice being heard?

The SNP’s faux anger and agenda are clear.

An ersatz grievance has been created and we await now the SNP declaring with mock sincerity that, sadly, it now has no choice but to seek to trigger Indyref 2…

There is a strong whiff of hypocrisy here, too, as the SNP is setting great store by proper procedure and respect for the traditions of both Westminster and Holyrood.

Yet at the same time Nationalists are riding roughshod over not one but two decisive referendums – the first the 2014 independence referendum and the second the UK’s Brexit vote of 2016.

The SNP thinks yesterday’s piece of cheap theatre was a political masterstroke but it failed utterly as it was so childishly transparent.

The party emerges diminished in the eyes of the Scottish public who have no end of real-world concerns – family budgets, job security, transport, the NHS, education – they want their elected representatives to focus on.

The Nationalists maintain Holyrood has been disrespected because its decision to withhold consent (not, in reality, required in law) for Brexit to progress has been ignored.

It is Scottish voters who have been disrespected by 35 swaggering MPs putting party before the public.