Tom Gordon

THE eclipse arrived early at First Minister's Questions today.

The speculations of the Office of Budget Responsibility, rather than the gyrations of the universe, were to blame.

In view of fiscal changes in the budget, falling oil prices and downright Unionism (see Twitter for details), the OBR had slashed its forecasts for North Sea revenue, rolling a deep shadow over SNP hopes for independence.

Nicola Sturgeon's face, like the mood on her backbenches, was temporarily dark as night.

Back in the olden days (six months ago), the SNP's pre-referendum promise had been for £8bn of oil dosh per year in an independent Scotland.

However in these utterly changed times, the OBR say it's now £0.6bn.

Given the SNP Government's most recent tax estimates remain "more than 10 times greater than those of the OBR", Labour's Kezia Dugdale asked if the FM would be revising them?

Ms Sturgeon said an update would be along "as soon as is feasible", but refused to say when.

And then something happened far stranger, rarer and dramatic than some poxy old eclipse.

Stretching the laws of both physics and credulity, from the weird shores of the cosmos came something that sounded uncannily like an admission of Nationalist fallibility.

After citing the equally skew-whiff estimates of others, the First Minister conceded: "It is fair to say that everybody's projections about oil were wrong."

For an instant, the chamber was spellbound, like a school trip awed by a planetarium.

And then, being Holyrood, it immediately snapped back into a kindergarten on a sugar binge.

Labour MSPs who reckoned the FM had just helped write their election bumf bayed in delight.

Before she could give into a temptation to apologise for almost pitching the country into a black hole, the FM recovered herself and remembered to keep attacking.

"The most revealing thing about Labour is how it gleefully pounces on anything that it can describe as bad news," she spat at Ms Dugdale.

"Our country's revenues are increasing and our public finances are improving. I know that does not suit Labour's narrative, but it happens to be a fact."

A fact in a parallel universe, perhaps, but not this one.

Ms Dudgale, who has developed a taste for oil since the SNP started choking on it, said the OBR figures showed "something quite extraordinary" about the SNP's miscalculations.

The FM said new figures would be out "as soon as possible" but again failed to give a date.

"When? When?" yelped Labour whip James Kelly, inspiring the rueful query "Why? Why?" in the mind of anyone watching him.

"Kezia Dugdale takes great glee in declining oil revenues," Ms Sturgeon went on.

"Here we have, yet again, the two faces of Labour. In England today, Labour is telling people that Westminster cuts are extreme. In Scotland, Labour is trying to tell people that Westminster is the saviour of our public spending. Is it any wonder that nobody believes a word that Labour says any more?"

That rallied her troops for a moment, but the Labour deputy was ready for it.

"The First Minister talks about two faces, but this week she was in England, telling people to vote Green, a party that wants to shut down the oil industry," she replied.

It was such a good line, Tory Ruth Davidson tried to use it as the basis of her questions.

But she'd been well and truly beaten to the punch.

Going through the motions, she reminded Ms Sturgeon the Greens in England condemned the £1.3bn boost for the oil industry in the budget as tax breaks for fossil fuel dinosaurs.

"When she is in London she urges people to vote for a party that says we should stop drilling and give hundreds of thousands of North Sea oil workers the sack.

"What kind of politics is that? What kind of judgment is that?"

A mystified voice rose from the SNP benches: "What kind of question is this?"

The FM was generous in her condescension.

"Dearie, dearie me," she signed.

"Just for the benefit of Ruth Davidson, and anyone else in the chamber, I say that I am Nicola Sturgeon, I live in Scotland, I am voting for the Scottish National Party and I encourage everybody else to vote for the SNP as well."

The SNP benches started to lighten up - Ms Davidson had ended the eclipse.

It was just like George Osborne said on Wednesday, "the sun is starting to shine".

Which just goes to show, never under-estimate the power of people from another planet.