The question before the chamber: Margaret Thatcher, eh?
What's that all about?
Like the former prime minister, we're none the wiser. Patrick Harvie of the Greens did his best to stage a reasoned debate on the topic "There is still such a thing as society". In return, MSPs fell on the chance of a free speech like stockbrokers at a privatisation.
Harvie gave a reasoned analysis of Thatcherism. Before he knew it, the Tory interventions had begun. They were popping up and down like a parliamentary version of whack-a-mole.
Gavin Brown, a Lothians Conservative, was first with the favourite word. The Tory line, it seemed, was to dismiss anything said about Thatcher as "demonisation".
Not a soul spoke against this demonisation of hard-working demons. Instead, they took to reading from the Woman's Own. It was, to be fair, a cut above most things said at Holyrood.
Had Thatcher said "There is no such thing as society"? Oh, yes. But had she really, really meant it, or had there been, as Ruth Davidson would gamely suggest, a "corruption of the quote"? One way to find out is to read the interview while homeless.
Still, Harvie had made good use of his 14 minutes. In contrast, Derek Mackay, the Housing Minister, took a full 10 minutes to say, "There is such a thing as society. Vote Yes in the referendum."
I paraphrase only slightly. SNP instructions seemed to be, "Say what you like, but get in a big plug for party policy." Mackay barely mentioned Margaret Who?
Davidson, on behalf of the massed half-rank of Tories, didn't exactly gush on behalf of "a true Conservative revolutionary", but it was close. She also confessed to never having voted for the paragon on the pathetic grounds that she was too young.
Davidson, or a handy historian, did slip in a fact the Nationalists forgot to mention. It had to do with the SNP's support for the Tories in the no-confidence vote that brought down Jim Callaghan.
That piece of history, like Thatcher, is safely in the past. Present day entertainment involved Davidson and the SNP's Joan McAlpine in a tussle over Friedrich Hayek and Labour's Elaine Murray employing the delightful phrase "narcissistic personality disorder".
No-one stated the obvious. The reason why they loved or loathed Thatcher is the reason why they are in different parties. Small wonder they didn't bother with a vote.
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