AT last, what we’d all been waiting for – Nicola Sturgeon’s oral evidence to the committee investigating her government’s handling of harassment complaints. An eight-hour session digging into what went wrong and allowing her the chance, at long last, to provide a detailed rebuttal of Alex Salmond’s claim of a “malicious plot” against him.

The session followed a week of fevered and at times hysterical commentary from irresponsible politicians and click-chasing journalists, who sought to suggest that various aspects of what they framed as a Salmond vs Sturgeon psychodrama called into question the very foundations on which Scottish democracy rests. One-party state! Banana Republic! Tinpot dictatorship! How much easier it is to throw around wild claims than it is to explain the tedious minutiae of how a new HR policy was created in the wake of #MeToo and how its implementation was botched, resulting in a costly legal defeat.

The National:

I would love to say that Wednesday’s session – in which the First Minister described not just her actions and the reasoning behind them but the emotional toll of learning about the accusations made against her predecessor – had left me with no lingering unease about the credibility of our parliament and the ways in which it operates. But I cannot, because I am left with two serious questions. The first is “how did Margaret Mitchell become an MSP?” and the second is “seriously – how on earth did Margaret Mitchell become an MSP?”

The short answer is, of course, through the Additional Member System, which is designed to produce more proportional representation than Westminster’s first-past-the-post and – as we are regularly reminded – to prevent the election of majority governments (the SNP would do well to remind people of this a bit more during the next two months). As a result, we have some MSPs who are not directly voted in by those living in a constituency, but rather are selected by their party to stand on the regional list, with the crème de la crème ranked at number one.

Margaret Mitchell has been ranked number one for Central Scotland since 2007. She is the best the Tories have to offer. Let that sink in.

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Not every good politician is a great orator, or even a half-decent one – far from it. That’s as it should be given we’re electing lawmakers, not movie stars, and every parliament needs a mix of personalities who can bring a diversity of skills to important behind-the-scenes work. The evidence-gathering of committees usually falls into this category, with only nerds and stakeholders tuning in to Parliament TV to watch it.

Unfortunately for Margaret Mitchell, rather a lot of people tuned in to watch as she put in her extended-remix performance of “not so much a question, as a comment” and just ... would … not … stop … talking. Coming from any committee member, this time-wasting would have been infuriating and grossly disrespectful of the First Minister, the other MSPs and everyone watching at home who was hoping for elucidation. But unfortunately Ms Mitchell has not been blessed with the ability to speak in complete sentences. A disastrous combination of arrogance, self-righteousness and incoherence resulted in cringeworthy scenes, culminating in a last-gasp ramble so outrageous that I feared poor Linda Fabiani’s eyes might roll right out of her head.

Ms Mitchell tried to argue that the operation of the inquiry of which she was part was “deeply damaging” to the Scottish justice system and “leads it into disrepute and open ridicule”. You have to admire the brass neck of someone making this claim while simultaneously being ridiculed not just by those watching from afar but also by whoever was caught on a microphone muttering “oh dear god” as she launched into the 29th minute of “asking” one of her “questions”.

The world – or at least the UK mainstream media – was watching. How mortifying that they’ll be left thinking this is the calibre of representation we have in the Holyrood parliament.

There were many legitimate questions to put to Nicola Sturgeon about what she knew and when, how she acted (or didn’t) in response to what she learned, and how her husband – SNP chief executive Peter Murrell – behaved after the initial complaints about Salmond were made. There is also the key question of why no heads have rolled following a judicial review that cost the taxpayer more than £500,000. Unfortunately, thanks to Mitchell’s antics many of those hoping to get to the truth of these matters will have switched off long before the committee turned its attention to them.

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The Tory was labouring under the misapprehension that viewers did not actually want to hear from the First Minister at all, but instead wished to be subjected to her own half-baked analysis of the evidence gathered to date, and then to be instructed on how to vote in May.

If she thought her own conduct would make Nicola Sturgeon look bad, she was mistaken. The consensus on the First Minister’s performance seems to be that she was assured, honest and human.

The verdict on Ms Mitchell’s? Absolutely excruciating.