TRANSPORT minister Humza Yousaf had his best ever FMQs. He wasn’t mentioned once. Instead of esoteric signalling faults at ScotRail, it was back to good old meat-and-potatoes failures in health and education. Ah, you can’t beat the classics.
“Does the First Minister have complete confidence in our education agencies?” asked Tory leader Ruth Davidson, before tipping out satchels of horrified quotes from members of Holyrood’s education committee on the subject.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority exists in a “parallel universe”, one MSP had said. “Sinking in a sea of jargon,” reckoned another.
Even Shetland Viking Tavish Scott had told the SQA “Please don’t scare me anymore”, and he relies on people voting LibDem to pay his mortgage, so he doesn’t scare easy.
Nicola Sturgeon addressed the first point by effectively saying no, she didn’t have confidence, because she’d ordered a “governance review” to shake them up.
As for the last point, she replied: “I don’t think I’m prepared to make not scaring Tavish Scott a key priority of Scottish Government policy in education or any other matter.”
Mr Scott’s face burned redder than a longship at Up-Helly-Aa.
Labour’s Kezia Dugdale then got Ms Sturgeon to admit more than 53,000 NHS patients had been forced to wait longer than the legal limit of 12 weeks for treatment.
“How bad do things have to get before she steps in to fix this mess?” she asked.
After the FM said things had been worse under Labour, a mere decade ago, the red benches groaned like a corridor in casualty.
LibDem Willie Rennie threw her a lifeline by going off on a rant about the Tories signing up to a “blank cheque Brexit”, before finally getting round to asking if she would back a LibDem tax plan.
“Will the FM join me, or will she bitterly point the finger at the Conservatives?”
Like the rest of the chamber, Ms Sturgeon wiped away one tear of contempt and one of compassion for this childlike lack of logic.
“I didn’t know whether Willie Rennie intended to turn FMQs into a stand-up comedy routine,” she panted, “but he’s perhaps succeeded on that front more than he succeeds normally.”
The workings of his mind forever unknowable, Mr Rennie simply grinned some more.
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