A chamomile teabag in the wrong recycling bin
THE Westminster Parliament may have been prorogued, unprorogued, and descended into the sort of rowdy establishment a sailor on shore leave would give a wide berth, but Holyrood has it beat for the uncanny.
Yesterday we were treated to the exotic sight of the Tories cheering on the Greens, surely one of the lesser-known omens of the impending End Times.
Alison Johnstone claims to be co-leader of the latter but so do various others. Going by her performance at First Minister’s Questions, they should put her in charge full-time. Unlikely as it sounds, she was the star of this week’s FMQs, giving Nicola Sturgeon the toughest time she’s had in parliament in many a week.
Johnstone and the Gaia Gang reckon the SNP’s 75 per cent carbon-cutting target doesn’t go far enough. They want it to be 80 per cent and, failing that, for us to live in caves and use elephant dung as currency. Still, you can’t beat a dose of old-fashioned principle and Johnstone hauled the First Minister up on her fixation with input over output.
She snipped: ‘We have every confidence in the SNP Government’s world-leading ability to set targets, but when it comes to meeting them, it is another matter.’
Ruh-roh. It takes a lot to get a Green angry. Someone must have put a chamomile teabag in the wrong recycling bin.
She then read out every target the Nationalists are missing, which took some time. With each one, her stern Edinburgh tone was met by a fresh throb of anguish from the SNP backbenches. NHS treatment times.
Wince. Cancer waiting times. Ouch. Expanding early years education. A sucking of teeth. Incredulity was scrawled across Nationalist faces. Why was she doing this? She was meant to be on their side.
But Sturgeon was having none of it. Trumpeting Wednesday’s reforms, she reminded Captain Patrick and the Planeteers that ‘the Green Party sat on its hands while the rest of the parliament did that’.
It wasn’t Sturgeon’s only bust-up with Holyrood’s leftier types. Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard asked if she really thought the SNP ought to shut the Electoral Commission out of the process of choosing a question for any second referendum on Scotland leaving the UK.
‘I will take today’s question from Richard Leonard as progress,’ Sturgeon shot back. ‘In asking about the question for an independence referendum, he now appears to be accepting one is inevitable. That is progress.’ She allowed herself a grin.
Leonard persevered. ‘This is about the integrity of your Government... What have you got to hide? Are you simply trying to rig the process?’
WHERE have they been keeping this Richard Leonard hidden? Did they replace the batteries at Labour conference? This was more like it.
Sturgeon dialled up the snark: ‘If I am understanding him right, Richard Leonard is demanding we test a question, again, for a referendum he also says should not happen and he will not allow to happen.’
The SNP benches roared into laughter, some of it genuine. Housing Minister Kevin Stewart’s noble dome snapped back and forward at such a pace he was in danger of doing himself an injury, or prompting seizures in the public gallery with the myriad light beams bouncing off his unadorned noggin.
Some hot-blooded barracking flew between SNP and Labour benches, all scored to a thunk! thunk! of palms drubbing desks. This is what FMQs is meant to be like: absurd theatre with every player a bigger ham than the one before.