The hills are alive with the sound of laughter at the SNP

THERE are few things more disciplined than a regiment of SNP politicians. The party’s parliamentary groups at Holyrood and Westminster are drilled to within an inch of the threat of deselection if they dare to speak out of turn.

Why, MPs were even obliged to sign an agreement guaranteeing that they would never disagree with the party on any subject, whatever it might be.

Should SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon decide that it was policy for every member of the Westminster group to dress as Alpine goatherds, the benches would creak with the sound of middle-aged men, squirming in lederhosen.

Angus Robertson would rise to his feet, adjust the feather in his Tyrolean hat, and demand to know what the prime minister was going to do about the fact the Alps were not in Scotland.

For too long, he would rage, Scotland has not shared borders with either Germany or Austria. Alex Salmond would begin, aggressively, to yodel. One by one, Nationalist MPs would join in until the Commons’ rafters shook to a medley of favourites from The Sound of Music. Later, Pete Wishart MP would tweet that Labour’s metropolitan goats were rubbish compared to his.

Sadly, the SNP’s displays of iron discipline are, generally, of a less colourful nature. The classic traditional display is for an obscure backbencher to ask the First Minister a planted question at Holyrood so that Miss Sturgeon might then opine at length about the ways in which the SNP is superior intellectually and morally – always morally – to any of those other awful parties.

When the First Minister sits down, triumphantly, her MSPs will welcome her wise words with thunderous applause. Sometimes it’s so loud that one can barely hear her Brexit Minister Mike Russell guffawing. Sometimes.

Yesterday, it fell to Aberdeen- shire East MSP Gillian Martin to set up such a First Ministerial flourish.

Now that the SNP had basically saved both the steel and shipbuilding industries, wasn’t it time for the UK Government to step up on behalf of the oil and gas industry?

Unsurprisingly, Miss Sturgeon thought that, yes, it was precisely the right time for Westminster to act.

And then, of course, came that ‘spontaneous’ applause, a thunder that would have echoed around an Alpine range, causing avalanches for several days.

But, sometimes, SNP discipline requires a different response from MSPs. There are occasions when the ability to remain poker-faced is as important as the ability to applaud like a performing sea lion.

And the questioner who followed Miss Martin, yesterday, created just such a situation.

It has emerged that Nationalist MP Chris Law was detained and questioned by police on Tuesday in regard to certain financial matters.

This came after investigations into two other former Nationalist MPs, Michelle Thomson and Natalie McGarry, who have both resigned the party whip. The investigation into Miss Thomson continues, while Miss McGarry was this week charged.

Tory MSP Murdo Fraser wondered whether, given the number of her Westminster colleagues currently helping the police with their inquiries, the First Minister was confident Police Scotland had the resources to deal with this upsurge in their workload?

As laughter rang out across the chamber at this dig dressed up as a serious question, Nationalist MSPs remained absolutely impassive. Even chuckles from the public gallery and – for shame – the press benches could not persuade a single one of them to crack.

For a moment, it looked as though Nationalist Sandra White might break but she kept things together, in the end, by looking down at her lap and refusing even to blink.

The First Minister replied that her Government was committed to protecting Police Scotland’s funding. It would do this despite Tory cuts to Holyrood’s budget.

This was, I suppose, about as much as Nicola Sturgeon could say, in the circumstances.

Her colleagues, who kept straight faces during such provocation, justified their existence to the ruthlessly disciplined SNP machine.

As yet, no senior SNP politician has been questioned by Police Scotland about how they came to own several dozen goats.