STRANGE phenomenon, the late Maggie Thatcher, and the way her invocation still has the power to reduce Holyrood to the level of a playground fight.
Yesterday's FMQs was not a high-water mark in parliamentary rhetoric, and Labour's Johann Lamont was twice invited by the Presiding Officer to withdraw remarks which questioned Alex Salmond's honesty.
This, of course, is another of these conventions we have adopted from Westminster, where the Members are honourable and must never be accused of lying, which famously gave rise to such creative constructs as "terminological inexactitude" or "economical with the actualité".
Holyrood was discussing plans for an oil fund - you wait 30 years and two come along at once - and new evidence casting doubt on whether there would be pennies to spare for either of these piggy banks.
Ms Lamont merely described answers from the First Minister as "dishonest" and all hell broke loose, with screams of outrage prompting the PO to invite her to withdraw the remarks, which she didn't, merely offering the alternative wording of "not being accurate", which failed to quiet the baying Nationalist hordes.
She then compounded this with the observation that "honesty is not something his Government deals in", prompting more mock outrage and a further invitation to withdraw from the increasingly sharp-voiced PO. There was a bit of waffle but no actual withdrawal.
We had got to this fever pitch because Ms Lamont had dropped the "T" bomb - reminding the Nationalists that they voted down the Labour Government 34 years ago, ushering in the Thatcher era.
This is the equivalent of handing round crystal meth to her backbenchers, turning them instantly into crazed hyenas, even although this all happened before some of them were born.
Alex Salmond retorted that it had been Labour Party anti-devolutionists who had brought down the Callaghan government "as Johan Lamont should know, she was one". Cue wild SNP cheering, jeering and desk-slapping. My God, these two tribes hate each other.
But then a strange thing happened. Ruth Davidson led the Tories into the same battle over the two papers on the oil fund and said she had fed them into university cheat software, which showed that the most favourable passages survived in both. "This is from the Alistair Campbell school of dodgy dossiers," she said.
The Labour backbenches went wild. A moment before, they had been in anti-Thatcher mode. Now a Tory leader mocking a Labour figure had them in ecstasy. It's a strange game.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article