Jack in the day

LORD McConnell was reminiscing about the birth of Holyrood at a breakfast bash organised by thinktank Reform Scotland this week. There was the “mad rush” to be the first MSP elected won by Tom McCabe, the first speech by Winnie Ewing and the first point of order raised by Dennis Canavan. Jack went on: “Sometimes people forget this, but Tommy Sheridan proposed the first private member’s bill. He was a new face in Scottish politics at that time, and obviously went on to-”. He paused diplomatically. “To other things.”

Island life

HOST Chris Deerin also crowdsourced questions on Twitter. A certain “Nicola of Bute House” asked what Jack could have done to win the 2007 election. Spend more time on party politics, and less on being FM, he said. “I tried to balance the two, but we lost by less than 1%, by 24 votes in North Ayrshire or something. Thank you, Arran. Grateful island - not.” As Lord McConnell grew up on Arran, presumably the islanders knew him best.

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Load of shirt

JACK also defended wearing his infamous striped kilt and girly blouse at a charity fashion show in the US in 2004. His former special adviser Peter Hastie told the audience his reaction had been “Dear God”, but Jack said he was “glad people have something to laugh at“. They sure do. On the night, he thought it had been a great success. Alas, not for long. “I went to bed in New York and at approximately 3.30am I got a phone call from my wife saying, ‘What the f*** is on the front page of The Herald?!’”

Cabinet furniture

WHEN Nicola Sturgeon told her cabinet about this week’s big Indyref2 statement, she received “positive feedback” from ministers, her spokesman said. But what sort, panted the Holyrood hacks. Table thumping, cheers, party poppers? The spokesman gave no details. Unspun hears the same question was later put to finance secretary Derek Mackay. Nothing showy, he said. “We’re too Presbyterian.” So no dancing either, then.

Web wonders

COINCIDENCE fans have noted that whenever Nicola Sturgeon is moved by the national interest to pronounce on Indyref2, her husband, SNP chief exec Peter Murrell, telepathically launches a new fundraising website. In March 2017, when the FM first called Indyref2, Pete instantly asked for £1m through ref.scot, and when she reset her plans that June, he started mobilise.scot to “build a better Scotland”. This week, when the FM gave the handle another crank, lo and behold, Pete started rattling the cup again with yes.scot. Cynical? Surely not.

Invisible letter

NOT that it always go well for the psychic duo. That £1m fundraiser was suspended after massively missing its target. Rather ominously, yes.scot once belonged to Yes Scotland, the losers of 2014. In fact, for the last four years its sole content has been a letter thanking Yessers for their efforts which referred to “accepting the result of the independence referendum”. But funnily enough that’s been deleted.

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Fallen branch

FINALLY, Unspun hears of more trouble at the SNP’s most dysfunctional branch, Coatbridge & Chryston, base of MSP Fulton MacGregor. Recent minutes state the auditors found more than 90% of branch spending lacked receipts - a legal requirement - a total of more than £2000. The branch next meets on Wednesday. We’d gladly buy tickets, but we would need a receipt.