Chilled and grilled at the podium of doom
BeTH Rigby has a stare that could freeze lava. The Sky News host trained her icy glare on Ash Regan, first victim in last night’s SNP leadership debate. The former community safety minister was summoned forward.
Rigby’s eyes narrowed as she read a series of poll findings. They showed the public considered the woman in front of her incompetent and untrustworthy.
If Regan’s independence thermometer did temperatures, it would have been registering somewhere below zero.
‘Can a rookie walk straight into the office of First Minister?’ Rigby demanded. ‘I’m far from a rookie,’ Regan protested. ‘I’ve been in government for almost five years.’
Rigby registered no expression. She leapt, panther-like, onto Regan’s plans for an independent currency.
Was she still claiming it would only take a few months? Regan insisted she had been misquoted and that it would take ‘between two and three years’ to set up a central bank. She would start work on it her first day in Bute House.
Again, Rigby was impassive. ‘What other institutions do you need to set up?’ Regan hesitated. ‘You don’t know?’
The leadership hopeful reiterated that she would establish a central bank.
Rigby fixed her prey with an arctic gaze. ‘What institutions do you need other than a central bank?’
Regan stuttered. ‘That’s that institution you need… this is a credible plan… I can’t give you all the details yet…’
My toes were curling with secondary embarrassment. Tell her something, I was shrieking at the TV, tell her anything!
Finally, Regan pleaded: ‘What other institutions are you talking about?’
‘The independent debt management office. The fiscal watchdog.’ Rigby’s tone was deadpan. Regan’s campaign was just dead. She pointed out that the First Minister has economic advisers.
‘Thanks for clearing that up,’ Rigby snipped, ‘but you do need other institutions, as your advisers will tell you.’
Her voice dripped with contempt. She moved onto the indy thermometer. Oh God, make it stop.
Regan said it was not her idea, that she had heard others talking about it, then said it could be ‘an index’. By the end of her answer, it had been scaled back to ‘information on a website’.
It still wasn’t over. Rigby called in Humza Yousaf to question his former colleague.
He accused her of contradicting herself on currency. ‘I’ve never contradicted myself,’ Regan countered, citing her answers to Rigby. ‘I’m pleased that, three weeks into the campaign, you’ve managed to clear that up,’ Yousaf quipped.
Kate Forbes was beckoned forward for her humiliation. Rigby pressed her on banning conversion therapy.
Forbes said the practice was ‘abhorrent’ and she supported a ban. Those dreaded eyes tightened again. Forbes had said ‘coercive’ conversion should be illegal but what about when an individual consents? Would she outlaw that too?
The helpless Highlander said everyone should be free to live as they wanted with whatever was their choice.
‘Choice,’ Rigby retorted, as though it was a four-letter word.
Yousaf jumped in to accuse Forbes of ‘appealing to Conservatives’. The horror!
Then he said she was going backwards in the polls. ‘Polling?’ she retorted. ‘I don’t think that’s where you’re particularly strong.’
Finally, the man himself was bidden to the podium of doom. Rigby ran through every NHS target he had missed. He tried to blame Covid for not meeting cancer waiting times.
‘You haven’t met it since 2010,’ she replied. He accused her of ‘changing the goal posts’.
‘It’s not my targets,’ she reminded him. ‘I’m just telling you they’ve been missed.’ Regan piped up that Yousaf had claimed credit for the Queensferry Crossing even though ‘it had nothing to do with you’.
Yousaf accused her of attacking the SNP’s record.
‘Don’t put words in my mouth,’ she snapped. ‘You came in at the end. You had a role – in the six-month delay at the end’.
We don’t need an opposition at Holyrood any more. Just play these debates on loop until the next election.