DULL FINALE TO THE THREE STOOGES’ TV ROADSHOW
TUESDAY night marked the final TV debate on the SNP leadership. BBC host Stephen Jardine said the audience had come ‘to hear who is the best candidate for the job’. Boy, had they wasted a trip.
The Three Stooges had brought their roadshow to Edinburgh and regaled the crowd with exciting ideas for fixing Scotland’s myriad problems.
Words like ‘inspire’, ‘engage’ and ‘vision’ were scattered liberally. The longer it went on, the more I felt inspired to engage a decent single malt until my vision was very impaired.
On and on they went about how they were the candidate to get this sorted or that seen to, and then they’d bicker back and forth between them. This went on for a good half-hour until a bloke in the cheap seats stuck his hand up.
The word he wanted to hear was ‘accountability’. He reminded the trio that they were all current or former ministers in a government that’s been in power for 16 years. Fix the problems? They caused them in the first place. I didn’t catch the chap’s name but I almost leapt out of my seat in agreement.
Much was the squirming up at the podiums. Ash Regan grimaced. Kate Forbes shifted from one leg to the other. Humza Yousaf’s eyes dived faster than Luis Suárez.
The gentleman’s intervention had a salutary effect. It seems, Regan admitted, that the Scottish Government ‘isn’t in touch with the priorities of the people’ and isn’t listening to them.
IT also had a less than salutary effect. Yousaf suggested the SNP Cabinet could travel the country to hear from ordinary people. And leave Patrick and Lorna in charge? No thanks. In fact, the allotment wing of the SNP wasn’t far from the centre of the debate.
The contenders got a shoeing from a small business owner – an SNP member no less – who said the Deposit Return Scheme was threatening her family firm.
Forbes and Regan pledged to pause the programme but Yousaf favoured an exemption for small bottlers and distillers.
He deflected Jardine’s attempt to draw comment on Lorna Slater’s handling of the DRS and pivoted to patter. ‘My dad’s been a small business owner for 40 years. I’ve been trying to get him to retire. So if you’re watching this, dad, please retire.’
The Greens were to the fore again in a back-and-forth on gender reform and Isla Bryson, initiated by Regan who tried to take Yousaf out at the knees on the issue but was hamstrung by the format.
Again, it was the punters who gave the candidates the roughest ride. Another fellow laid into their record on education, noting that they’d spent only two minutes of an hour-long debate talking about schools.
It was their mob, he said, that had presided over falling literacy and numeracy and had withdrawn Scotland from international league tables as the results were ‘embarrassing’. As for the Curriculum for Excellence, his teacher pals dubbed it ‘curriculum for excrement’.
After the past few weeks, it felt odd watching the SNP’s record be trashed by someone other than a Cabinet minister. But these broadsides from the studio audience were the best bit of an otherwise flaccid affair.
Naturally, secession got a good showing, with the three rivals all swearing independence would be achieved within five years if they won the top job.
Given what’s happened to every other policy they’ve turned their hand to, independence should find a hiding place and lay low for a while.
Having watched every one of these debates and party hustings – well, the ones they let us watch – I am baffled why anyone thought this was a good idea. Stick three leading lights of the SNP in TV studios and let them rip into each other and their government. It’s been tremendously entertaining. But it’s also drawn the country’s attention to what a hopeless lot they are.