STRANGE days in Scottish politics.
The taxman, once ranked somewhere between the Conservatives and boils in voter affection, is the country's new superhero – our last line of defence against the masked, haven-hopping multinationals we once loved for their coffees and online bargains, but who are now synonymous with the dregs.
Hence Johann Lamont's pop at Alex Salmond's plan to woo those same villains by cutting their tax rate by 3p, subject, of course, to independence.
"Does the First Minister think that George Osborne has cut corporation tax enough or does is he urging the Chancellor to go further?" wondered the Labour leader. The First Minister managed a chuckle, but his face looked ineffably pained.
He found a crutch in Gordon Brown. The former Labour PM once cut corporation tax, he recalled, so, basically, that's all right then. And besides, the important thing was collecting the tax due and it was "the policy of successive UK governments to set the corporation tax rate and then not collect it." Lamont's dead-pan scowl never flickered.
"That answer sounded like one of Mike Russell's bus trips from Campbeltown," she sighed, alluding to his reported view of said service as "s****y".
(As he disdains all slurs on his infallibility, the Education Secretary denies the remark.)
Dubbing him Fred Goodwin's penfriend, Lamont accused the FM of courting "corporate greed", despite public revulsion at tax avoidance. His one supporter, she claimed, was "tax exile Jim McColl", the pro-Yes billionaire who swapped his Scots tax residence for a sunnier one in Monaco. In other words, 'Shut your croissant hole and leave this debate to the locals, McColl'.
Salmond leapt to defend "Scotland's leading job creator", but Lamont quoted the FM's Nobel-draped adviser Joseph Stiglitz on the folly of corporate tax cuts. Salmond thundered that the policy was best for jobs, growth and Scots. "That's why this government is in office and that's why Johann Lamont's party" – he flicked his hand as if at a wasp – "is over there."
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson also had a good week at FMQs. Which is to say, she didn't have a terrible one. Strange days indeed.
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