THE parliamentary recess is a dangerous time for parties. Starved of sustenance from the Holyrood machine, the press pack starts sniffing around obscure corners in search of stories.

Bad headlines can lurch out of nowhere, and with little else filling the news cycle, become crises.

I well remember the sleepy New Year of 2005 when First Minister Jack McConnell went on holiday to Majorca with Kirsty Wark, and the question of whether a Labour-BBC cabal was running Scotland was suddenly the only tale in town.

But in this recess, a far more serious story has plagued the government of the day. The case of Mark McDonald, the Aberdeen Donside MSP who resigned as childcare minister over alleged sexual misconduct, has thrown an unflattering light on the SNP and raised calls for an overhaul in the law governing golden goodbyes.

Mr McDonald stepped down on November 4 after he was the subject of a complaint to the SNP. He admitted “inappropriate” behaviour, but put it down to a botched attempt at humour. Nicola Sturgeon likewise minimised his action: “He’s a good MSP and he will continue to be so.”

Then the story began to shift. A week later, Mr McDonald admitted he had in fact caused a woman “considerable distress and upset”. Then a second complaint surfaced, and he was suspended by the SNP on November 16. He has not been seen at Holyrood since and is rarely at his constituency office. He is still drawing his MSP salary of £61,778.

The SNP is investigating his behaviour, but has yet to reveal any of what it has found. It has brought in an external agency to help it.

Mr McDonald’s case dominated recess because of an accumulation of issues. Last weekend a fresh allegation emerged about his conduct. The simultaneous arrival of the 100 day mark since his resignation prompted calls for the SNP to speed up its inquiry. Transport minister Humza Yousaf conceded the investigation was perhaps taking longer than it should.

Finally, the Herald reported Mr McDonald was paid a “resettlement grant” of £7,270 around 90 days after he quit. Former ministers receive such grants automatically, regardless of the circumstances in which they leave office. MSPs are now considering a change in the law.

Throughout the affair, and in other recent cases of bad behaviour, the SNP’s attitude to outside scrutiny has been atrocious.

It has pulled down the shutters and refused to engage. The party’s press office is normally efficient and friendly. But when it comes to matters of misconduct, suddenly there’s nobody home.

There is a lockdown strategy. Requests for comment simply go unanswered. It is stonewalling of the crudest kind. In public, the SNP often claims to be taking a moral lead on issues of the day, but on this issue it is becoming the shabbiest, most introverted party at Holyrood.

For instance, last weekend the Sunday Herald ran a story about the behaviour of SNP stalwart Norman Will, the constituency head of office for cabinet secretary Fergus Ewing.

The paper approached the SNP about his conduct in November. It repeatedly refused to respond, other than to question whether there was any public interest in the matter.

It took a statement from the police confirming a complaint about Mr Will to shake a comment out of the party some three months later.

The SNP also received complaints recently about an MP, but did not check to see if there were credible until approached by the media. It reeks of a head-in-the-sand culture.

Holyrood is currently conducting an inquiry into sexual harassment. The SNP submission, written by compliance officer Ian McCann, says parliament should adopt a “clear” complaints process for all concerned, “including the public and the media, observing the process from a public scrutiny standpoint”. To many in the party and the media, that is a sick joke.

I have lost count of the number of exasperated SNP members I have spoken to down the years who have complained about bad behaviour in the party and heard nothing in reply, or been fobbed off.

His submission also said that Holyrood should avoid “confusion over processes”. Yet the SNP is notorious for the same problem.

In 2016, its own MPs demanded HQ restore the whip to Michelle Thomson because the internal process was a mess. She had been “denied natural justice,” they said.

The hiring of an outside firm to help investigate Mr McDonald is also not standard practice, but an ad hoc measure. Confusion and arbitrary responses seem sadly common.

“They talk about openness and transparency but that’s not borne out in reality,” says one senior SNP source about HQ. “The culture is all about damage limitation.”

The SNP is currently consulting its members on how to improve its operation. I hope it works. But my experience in recent months has been of the party becoming more secretive and allergic to sunlight.

It’s a corrosive state of affairs that seems to be getting echoed inside government, with political meddling in what should be legally-decided freedom of information requests.

The Mark McDonald story is more than a recess phenomenon. It is part of a broader malaise.