A WEEK is a long time in politics, but half a parliament is so long ago it’s like it never happened. Ask Ruth Davidson. At First Minister’s Questions, the Tory leader tore into the SNP for parents not getting enough information from schools.
It was “shameful”, she told Nicola Sturgeon. The FM scratched her head like nittyest kid in the playground.
Ms Davidson was moaning about a lack of performance info, but she also wanted to ban tests for P1 pupils that would yield more performance info.
Mmmm. Not only that, but half a parliament ago, the Scottish Tory manifesto backed the same tests they now wanted to defeat in a vote to embarrass the SNP.
Ms Sturgeon stop scratching. Ah, now she understood. “The Conservatives are shameless opportunists.” Eureka!
Ms Sturgeon fared less well when LibDem Willie Rennie pointed out the EIS also thought P1 tests were a dreadful mess.
The FM was reluctant to pick a fight with Scotland’s biggest teaching union. “I’m not saying the EIS is wrong; I’m saying I have a difference of opinion with the EIS,” she havered meekly.
Then it was quickly onto the creep of the week competition, as various Nats vied to pitch Ms Sturgeon the most abject under-arm delivery imaginable.
George Adam wondered if she agreed a new devolved benefit showed the SNP was building a social security system with “fairness and dignity at its heart”. Guess what? She did.
James Dornan, whose new beard cannot hide his inner rage at pretty much everything in life, dutifully read out an HQ script about Brexit. But you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t chew up the paper as usual.
Stewart Stevenson droned about a lack of mobile coverage on 1000 miles of Scottish roads.
Who cared if fewer distracted drivers made them safer, these awful oases surely made the case for Holyrood to finally get power over “mobile telephony”. Ms Sturgeon was with him 100%.
But the biggest poodle of the litter was Gordon MacDonald, with an inspired follow-up to a Tory question about foreign language teaching in schools.
“I took the time to search the Conservative manifestos from 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2017 but couldn’t find a single mention of foreign language teaching,” he lamented with glee. Did the FM agree “the Tories’ only guiding principle is to attack the SNP?”
Ms Sturgeon was startled at how much she concurred. “That is a point very well made...Tories are political opportunists.”
Indeed. So thank God for Holyrood’s rigorous and righteous backbenchers. I fear the moral high ground would be quite empty without them.
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