Angry Alison tries to tame a smug FM and boorish, yawping MSPs
AlISON Johnstone has had it up to here with your nonsense. Earlier this week, the Presiding Officer blocked a statement by Angus Robertson after he blabbed the details to the media beforehand.
And in an ill-tempered First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Johnstone spent much of her time telling off a long-winded Nicola Sturgeon and rowdy opposition MSPs. ‘We will hear Mr Ross!’ ‘Members! Members!’ ‘Briefly First Minister!’ I say we crowdfund to get the woman a cattle prod. Or at the very least a wee button that releases a pack of hungry Rottweilers in the direction of the nearest noise.
The boorish yawping at Holyrood stands out more than at Westminster, where there is altogether more yawping and more boorishness to it.
The reason may be that, at its best, Westminster throws up spellbinding moments: Hilary Benn’s impassioned speech on Syria, Charles Walker’s ‘honourable fool’ broadside against his government, luciana Berger’s heartbreaking description of the antisemitism she was being subjected to.
Holyrood has no comparable moments because it is not a comparable parliament. It’s a loud place with much to be quiet about.
Yesterday, Douglas Ross narrowed in on Sturgeon’s plans for another indyref, complaining: ‘The SNP Government says it wants to hold another divisive independence referendum in October next year, but Nicola Sturgeon can’t even say whether ferries will float by then. She will not have closed the school attainment gap by then. She will not have returned NHS services to normal by then. She will not have cleared the court backlogs by then.’
Sturgeon replied: ‘I welcome Douglas Ross’s line of questioning. It is an implicit – if not yet an explicit – recognition that people in Scotland will have their say on independence in line with the democratic mandate that this parliament has.’
There is a fine line between smug and sassy and Sturgeon forever has her toe on it. This was sassy Sturgeon. It was not, however, answer-the-question Sturgeon. Her logic was that independence was key because it was the only way to change the very outcomes Ross was asking about. It’s a very convenient logic: the only way to disprove it is to vote for independence and see what happens.
Anas Sarwar took up the cause of Audit Scotland, the last public body truly independent of the SNP and one in line for further budget cuts. Was it not the case, Sarwar asserted, that Sturgeon was ‘cutting Audit Scotland’s budget because it makes it harder for it to expose the Government’s failure?’
‘Oh, dear,’ Sturgeon snipped. ‘I thought Anas Sarwar might have done some basic homework before coming to the chamber. I have some news for him: the Scottish Government does not set the budget for Audit Scotland.’
THE organisation is funded by audit fees from public bodies via the Scottish parliament. That doesn’t make the process wholly independent of the SNP but it does by enough to lend the teensiest, technical plausibility to Sturgeon’s protest.
‘Nicola Sturgeon can be as condescending as she likes,’ Sarwar fired back. ‘We are used to it.’
‘Forgive me,’ the First Minister hissed, ‘but when Anas Sarwar makes basic errors, it’s not condescending to point them out. It’s not my job to hide the incompetence of the leader of the Scottish labour Party.’
That was definitely smug rather than sassy. Emma Harper wanted to know what ministers were doing to ‘promote responsible access to Scotland’s countryside’. Take a right at the Campsies and don’t pee in the lay-bys.
In fact, she had in mind the worrying of farm animals by pet dogs, a matter on which she has apparently passed a Bill. A serious problem, no doubt, but more worrying than even the most boisterous border collie is the fact we’re allowing Emma Harper to legislate.