THE day after Nicola Sturgeon’s marathon filibuster in Holyrood’s Committee Room One an SNP party political broadcast said everything about what really matters in Scottish politics.

This breathy production featured a collection of shiny acolytes who’d changed from No to Yes in the last few years and was infused with the SNP’s signature accoutrements in these slick slices of propaganda: moody background music; slate-grey skies and the sense that something good was just around the corner.

“Change must come” was the mantra dutifully chanted by the chosen pursuivants: a more accurate slogan would have been “Change just ‘cos”.

Nothing in it suggested that anything needed to change at all: not the patterns of social inequality that have persisted during the party’s 14-year at the helm of government; not the atrocious health outcomes in the usual communities; not the class-driven imbalances that tilt the odds away from the poor. Just lashings of ‘empathy’ and some designated pining for the European Union.

Empathy is the false virtue that underpins all political discourse in Scotland. It’s imposed with one of those smiles that begins slowly to turn down at the mouth the closer you get to it. It’s often paired with ‘progressiveness’, the most meaningless and barren term in public life. 

It’s been weaponised by a self-regarding elite of political lightweights and journalists with so little self-esteem they constantly seek affirmation from social media’s chosen few, like school swots trying to speak slang but inserting the glottal stops in all the wrong places. It’s an ethereal, shape-shifting concept that moves across all parties, conveniently freeing its most persistent users from doing anything real about historic patterns of multi-deprivation.

The previous night the Labour Party in Scotland had their own, more utilitarian party broadcast. It featured its new leader, Anas Sarwar, who was also prescribing empathy for the masses: “By staying apart we have come together like never before.” 

It echoed the sentiments of one of his predecessors, Kezia Dugdale, in her self-appointed role of National Moonbeams Coordinator. She had even reached across the divide to co-author an article with the SNP’s Stephen Gethins about a project called Together. Their mission is “to build kinder, closer and more connected communities … together”.

It’s easy to prescribe kindness when you’re shielded from the pandemic by substantial salaries and bijou apartments in arboreal neighbourhoods. 

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Meanwhile, here’s what’s really happening been happening on the ground: our neediest children are getting poorer across every social indicator and NHS24 is fielding record numbers of calls about mental health issues in these places. 

The people who live in them will suffer disproportionate long-term economic and health outcomes. Kindness, empathy and progressiveness won’t cut it. But they’ll get a few thousand follows and likes on Twitter; the self-obsessed panopticon of the political classes.

The Salmond/Sturgeon showdown had been portrayed as a giant political thunderclap which could alter the trajectory of independence. 

Didn’t their studied eloquence reflect well on the Scottish Way? 

Some seasoned journalists seemed to forget that their role is to be aloof from supplication and remain impervious to the arts and charms of political snake-oil merchants. Ms Sturgeon had ‘empathy’ and wasn’t that just wonderful?

It was depressing to watch. During Mr Salmond’s testimony we got to see what entitlement and lengthy exposure to power can do to a man. He’d become so divorced from reality that he couldn’t even pause to reflect on his own conduct which had led him to the High Court last year where, of course, he was cleared of all charges.

Ms Sturgeon’s party hacks took turns, meanwhile, to hold her train throughout her testimony and would have us believe that she shone. Really? 

Her relationship to the truth was – let’s be kind here – patchy. Nothing you can prove, you understand, but travelling on the assumption that the rest of us are stupid and gullible. She was like a football manager who says he didn’t see the deliberate handball that happened five feet in front of his eyes.

There was even an attempt to portray the questioning of her as evidence itself of misogyny. Cat Boyd, the writer and trade unionist dismantled that one, tweeting:

“Big alarm bells ring in my head when men INSIST that powerful women simply MUST be victims of misogyny. The infantilisation of women as political actors is rife and I’m totally sick of it.”

The First Minister re-affirmed her commitment to ensuring women’s voices are heard. Yet, she can’t find the sliver of humanity that might comfort a party colleague facing multiple threats of assault merely for defending women’s sex-based rights. It renders her staged empathy on Monday utterly bogus.

In all of the Salmond/Sturgeon imbroglio we are assured that the esoteric functioning of Holyrood – separation of powers; government business/party business; the proper functioning of the civil service – is all really, really important. 

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Yet, the entire structure can easily be shaped this way and that by the savants of progressiveness. Just look at the stealth tactics Humza Yousaf is currently deploying in his Hate Crime Bill. This is one of the most truly sinister pieces of legislation in the devolved era and carries an implicit threat to women’s rights. But hey; it’s ‘progressive’: everybody says so.

Last month, a survey of hate crime in Scotland found, yet again, that the most abused minority in Scotland are Catholics of Irish descent. Yet the Scottish Government and the agencies it provides with millions in funding refuse even to call it by its proper name, preferring instead to describe it as ‘sectarianism’. This allows them the ‘plague on both their houses’ release clause.

It renders Mr Yousaf’s concern about the treatment of other minorities as fake as his boss’s concern for the safety of women.

The Salmond/Sturgeon ego-war represents the final failure of Scotland’s narcissistic, self-obsessed political class: a tawdry little human drama that will have no bearing on the chances of our poorest communities in facing the challenges of the next 10 years. 

Don’t worry though; we’re all now conversant on the separation of the legislature and the judiciary. 
And isn’t it just brilliant that we’re such a progressive and empathetic wee country too? Hip, hip …