ANXIETY dreams can be awful.

We are familiar with the classics: the surprise exam; being naked in public; endlessly wandering around a car park searching for a vehicle that refuses to be found (no, hang on, that's everyday reality for some of us).

All disconcerting in their way. But imagine dreaming that you are now the leader of the SNP in Westminster, and in a few hours you will have to stand in the Commons chamber and ask a question of the Prime Minister. All of this to take place before an unpleasant, hostile crowd, and that’s just your own side.

The Tory benches will be worse. Look at the scorn they poured on the previous holder of the job, Ian Blackford. Week after week, that mocking laughter, those jibes, some of them childishly weight-related. Why Disney never optioned the film rights will forever be a mystery.

But here was Stephen Flynn, 34-years-old, youngest of the party leaders and an MP for just three years. What had he ever done to merit such cruel and unusual treatment, apart from asking for the job in the first place?

This changing of the SNP leadership guard at Westminster has been a rum old business. First, it was reported that Mr Flynn told Ian Blackford that his tea was oot. But then the MP for Aberdeen South said he had no intention of standing for the leadership. Odd.

When Mr Blackford decided to resign and take the tea set home with him to Skye, it seemed as if the way was clear for Mr Flynn to be crowned leader unopposed.

Then, in an audacious Saturday night fever move, Alison Thewliss MP plonked her handbag on the dance floor and said she was going for the top job. Since she and Nicola Sturgeon are bezzie mates, Ms Thewliss was now considered the shoo-in.

A close run contest was predicted, but in the end Mr Flynn won comfortably, 26 votes to 17.

As you might expect, Opposition parties were tripping over themselves to wish the new man well, mainly by wishing the party’s overall leader not so well.

The Scottish Conservatives called the vote a “personal humiliation” for Ms Sturgeon. Not as embarrassing as all those U-turns executed by Douglas Ross, but no one wanted to spoil the joyous mood by bringing those into the conversation.

Scottish Labour said it was “a two-fingered salute” to the First Minister. Charming.

In the event, I thought Mr Flynn did well yesterday. His questions were too long, overstuffed and a bit clever-clever. PMQs are a brawl in an alley, not a fencing competition.

But there was little sign of nerves, even when the shouting started. With such confidence anyone would have thought that he, like many of those heckling him, had arrived at the Commons straight from private school and Oxbridge, but no. Mr Flynn is working class and proud of it. “Few working class folk ever make it to parliament, fewer still run to be political leaders,” he wrote in his mini-manifesto.

This, together with his relative youth and enthusiasm, marks him out for attention. Then there is the new deputy leader, Mhairi Black. Together they are a sort of punk Holly and Phil, Burchill and Parsons, two hip young gunslingers ready to shake up the tired town that is Westminster. The media are already solidly on the pair’s side, God help them.

There are some in the SNP who see the shake-up at Westminster as something to fret about. It is understandable, given how tight party discipline has been in the past, that there should be an allergic reaction to change. When a party presents itself as anti-establishment outsiders, even when it has been in power for so long, it is hard to accept criticism, particularly from within.

The same nervousness might apply to any change in the style of leadership at Westminster. Mr Flynn told Sky News he was going to be “assertive, to say the least”, whatever that means. Would that be assertive in the manner of Dennis Skinner, say, or Michael Heseltine, Alex Salmond, Margaret Thatcher, or some other star performer of the parliamentary past?

Time was when the emergence of a rival candidate close to the leader would have been enough of a sign to stop the carry-on and fall back into line. Not this time, though. Either Ms Sturgeon misjudged the situation, or her MPs are far from happy campers and wanted to let her know it.

Both seem likely. There are some who think leaving the chance of another referendum in the hands of The Supreme Court was a foolish move on the First Minister’s part. One that is being compounded, moreover, by presenting the next General Election as a de facto referendum on independence, “de facto” in this case being the Latin for “We’re making this up as we go along”.

Why should SNP MPs limit their chances of re-election by standing on such a restricted platform? Just imagine the reception that might get on the doorsteps. Certainly the first polls after the Supreme Court ruling showed a boost in support for independence.

But come an election in 2024, after two years of austerity and the hammering of public services beyond the state they are in now, the electorate might not take the same “big picture” view.

They could see a vote for Labour as the quickest way out of the Conservative-imposed mess, and there is just enough in the reforms outlined by Gordon Brown this week to seal the deal.

Those are scenarios for tomorrow, however. For now, Ms Sturgeon is stuck with a situation that was not of her choosing at a time when so many other woes are piling up. Waiting lists, strikes, ferries, Covid, recession, the rebellion over gender reform, an impatient party tired of being marched uphill and down … all of this and now potentially interesting times ahead at Westminster with a new "king" to her "queen".

That said, Ms Sturgeon was gracious in what some continued to insist was a defeat. She described the new dynamic duo in SW1A as a “truly formidable team”. Formidable is a word that could go either way, positive or negative.

Whatever, between Edinburgh and London there are now four of them, including two deputies, in this party leadership, plus assorted others with their own opinions on the best way forward. Now that is crowded.

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