PPE to Holyrood ASAP – and possibly some vials of anti-venom too
After Wednesday’s bad-tempered FMQS, yesterday’s announcementbynicolasturgeon on the next steps out of lockdown confirmed that the latex gloves are well and truly off.
The bin for needles and other sharps began to fill as the veneer of a cross-party agreement on tackling the coronavirus pandemic didn’t so much split as shattered, with poisoned barbs being exchanged across the floor.
Perhaps Jackson Carlaw had been hoping to spend the weekend with a glass of chilled rosé in a beer garden, for he was extremely vexed with what he heard from the First Minister.
The Scottish Conservative leader’s voice dripping with scorn, he declared that Ms Sturgeon “just didn’t get it”; she didn’t understand the depth of the economic challenges facing Scotland and her ministers were spending too much time on Twitter scolding journalists rather than getting on with their day jobs.
For his temerity to be triptrapping across the bridge of consensus, she not only branded the benches behind him social media “trolls” but declared in her best disappointed voice that it was “regrettable that Jackson Carlaw is incapable of rising to the challenge of a national crisis”.
Despite having no mask, Mr Carlaw refused to shield or yield. To SNP jeers, he said that, while he welcomed the latest measures to ease lockdown, he had done so “a fortnight ago when they were announced elsewhere with much derision from her”.
The First Minister bristled: “That would have been utterly reckless and put lives at risk, that’s why increasing numbers of people are glad Jackson Carlaw is not standing in this position.”
Reaching for one of her more well worked put-downs, she said Mr Carlaw, a noted fan of Bob Dylan, “blows with the wind, or rather blows in whatever direction his colleagues in Westminster tell him to”.
By now the consensual relationship between government and opposition over Covid-19 was in intensive care.
Reacting to Ms Sturgeon’s statement that she was consistently talking to business organisations, he advised her: “I hope she’s listening to them as well – she needs to – she needs all the help she can get.”
Ms Sturgeon retorted:“if Jackson Carlaw just wants to continue to snipe from the sidelines then I will leave him to do that because I’ve got work to do.”
It’s not mentioned on the lockdown route map but it would seem that normal political business has resumed faster than any other.