Pushed to the margins of the Holyrood chamber following May’s election, the Scottish Conservatives have been looking for a way to force their return to centre stage.
This week, John Swinney handed them an opening when he travelled to Cardiff for a press conference that critics portrayed as an exercise in constitutional mischief.
The First Minister appeared alongside leaders of Irish nationalism and Wales, openly discussing a political agenda that opponents say is aimed at breaking up the United Kingdom.
For Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay, it was the moment he had been waiting for: Swinn Fein.
At First Minister’s Questions, Findlay attacked Swinney over his engagement with Sinn Fein, saying the party had “never denounced IRA terrorism”. He reminded the SNP leader that Sinn Fein had defended violence which killed countless people, including Scottish soldiers.
In Findlay’s view, Swinney’s willingness to meet Sinn Fein demonstrated how firmly he is controlled by an impatient and uncompromising nationalist grassroots movement. In that sense, he suggested, the First Minister is something of a political prisoner.
Swinney was challenged over his relationship with Sinn Fein
The Tory leader spoke with evident revulsion as he cited Swinney’s response in May to questions about working with Sinn Fein and the controversy such co-operation could provoke: “I really do think people have got to move on.”
Would Swinney offer the same advice to people in Gaza, Findlay’s allies might ask?
The SNP benches erupted in protest. Findlay’s central challenge was stark: why should people in Northern Ireland be expected to move beyond the Troubles when Swinney himself cannot move on from what he called a “sodding” independence referendum?
Mr Swinney snapped that he had ‘always expressed my sympathy to the victims of terrorism’ and, what’s more, he had ‘also accepted, in good grace, the outcome of the referendum’.
The Tories and Reform cracked up at that one. The man has never accepted anything in good grace in his puff.
If you gave him the winning lottery numbers in advance, he’d complain about the cost of a ticket.
He assured Mr Findlay that, ‘People in this country would be surprised if I did not stick to the principled reason why I entered politics’.
People in this country would be surprised if Mr Swinney could locate a principle with a GPS and ground-penetrating radar.
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All the while, the din was building, as was the irritation on the Presiding Officer’s puss. Unrepentant racket- merchant, Mr Kerr – Stephen (Tory), not Thomas (Reform) – was hooting and yelling and making a nuisance of himself.
His boss was still up on his pins, giving Mr Swinney what for: ‘Why is his constitutional obsession more important than fixing Scotland’s broken public services?’
This is where the Tories lose me, all this get-on-with-the-day-job stuff. The SNP exists for one reason and one reason alone: to smash up the United Kingdom and turn Scotland into Brigadoon.
Admittedly, in recent years, that vision has evolved slightly. Now they want Brigadoon to fly the Pride Progress flag and run an economy on windmills and the industrial theories of East Germany circa 1972.
Russell Findley riled John Swinney at FMQs
This is them getting on with the day job, and it appeals to enough voters to have kept them in power for 19 years.
At some point, and two decades should have been plenty long enough, the Tories and Labour will have to reckon with the fact that this devolution experiment has handed one government after another power without responsibility.
The SNP won’t be the last mob to take advantage of that.
Mr Findlay landed a fair few blows but Mr Swinney swung back by taunting him about a supposedly imminent merger, what he branded a ‘marriage of convenience over there between the Conservative Party and Reform’.
At which point, the Scottish Tory leader rammed his fingers down his throat as though about to vomit.
I believe the Earl of Liverpool made a similar philosophical point during a debate on the Corn Laws.
By now Stephen Kerr was hollering at Mr Swinney: ‘Answer the question! Answer the question!’
Settle down, Bamber Gascoigne. The Presiding Officer had a word. Mr Kerr doesn’t need a word, he needs a sedative.