IS Holyrood determined to look like a basket case?

The final weeks of the year the Scottish Parliament were nothing short of an embarrassment — grist to the mill of a vocal minority who argue devolution should be ditched.

As MSPs wound down for Christmas, they provided gift after gift to the Abolish Holyrood crew.

I am not among those people. The institution, however imperfect, is not the problem.

There are many good MSPs, but unless those  running the show and are using it as their plaything don’t buck up their act, a rot could easily set in.

These are febrile times where a fed-up and volatile electorate is prone to unleashing its wrath on failing establishments.

The last couple of weeks alone have seen the Scottish Parliament consuming itself with acts of self-harm which nudge it towards this bracket.

For MSPs’ sake — and not just because many of them now log on remotely rather than turn up — it’s a good job most people are tuned out of what happens there day to day.

Chief among indignities this month has been the time-wasting scandal of Justice Secretary Angela Constance misleading parliament in order to try to wriggle out of endorsing a proper inquiry into child grooming gangs in Scotland.

We’ve seen parliament wasting its time over a pointless law for dog theft, which was already illegal. This Bill — part of a trend where Holyrood legislates for things that are already against the law — was so numb-skulled it actually managed to cut the maximum sentence.

Last week we saw a bid by vindictive MSPs to have one of their own number — Ash Regan — suspended for the oh-so-heinous misdemeanour of posting on social media that she was complaining about Green twit Maggie Chapman’s unhinged attack on the judiciary over April’s Supreme Court gender ruling.

To cap off a fortnight of embarrassment, just hours before Holyrood knocked off for Christmas there were disturbing allegations from female SNP MSPs about their offices being ‘bugged’ by male staffers who were trying to stitch them up.

Maybe it is because we are hurtling towards the Scottish Parliament elections in May, but at the moment there is a stark disconnect between the game-playing and idiocy at Holyrood, and the need for a relentless focus on improving public services in various states of decline or crisis.

The energy of the party of government, the SNP, appears to be being used, overwhelmingly on shoring up its reputation, battered in recent years amid scandals and broken promises, and the failures to use the significant powers of Holyrood to better the country.

When a government’s efforts are geared more toward defending themselves than working to better the country, the country is in deep trouble.

The Constance scandal which has been dogging the Scottish Government, using up untold amounts of government resources and parliamentary time, is a case in point.

SNP ministers have been resisting calls for the past year to order a grooming gangs inquiry in Scotland, following probes south of the border.

This, despite evidence there may be a significant problem in Scotland too.

Being seen to oppose exhaustive inquiries into child abuse is, I would argue, never a good look, but such is the desire for the SNP to make out Scotland is superior and immune to all those terrible things that happen in morally bankrupt England, they have consistently batted away questions on the matter.

Mother Swinney’s gossip rules

JOHN Swinney told a podcast last week that his mother would never have made it in politics as she “never gossiped, never talked ill of other people and had a great generosity of spirit”.

He added: “I sometimes challenge myself in politics: ‘Would your mother think you’re deploying that generosity of spirit towards others?’” Angela Constance would certainly think so, after his defence of her half-truths.

The self-styled Full-On John also had this to say about the 2024 General Election – where the SNP won nine seats, down from 48 in 2019: “In retrospect, if I hadn’t come in, I think we would have probably been routed.”

Er, you did get routed, John.

So, in September, Constance flagrantly misrepresented Professor Alexis Jay — the chair of England and Wales’s child sex abuse inquiry — to justify SNP ministers’ opposition to a Tory bid for a fully fledged Scottish inquiry.

She did this by claiming Prof Jay “shares my view and has put on the record and stated to the media that she does not support further inquiries into child sexual abuse and exploitation”. But Prof Jay was only speaking about England and Wales — and not Scotland.

If Constance knew this, she should be sacked or quit for misleading the country. If she didn’t know, she should be sacked for being an idiot.

Emails released this month showed Prof Jay was seriously displeased with this word twisting, but Constance, Swinney and their army of ministers and officials conspired to pretend the minister hadn’t said what she said.

All rather than say sorry.

This saga will drag on into the new year, as there may well be a ministerial code breach investigation, if the independent panel who are meant to do this ever show signs of life.

It is more evidence of SNP ministers’ pathological aversion to being straight with people.

And they are using every trick and trapping of power bestowed upon them at Holyrood to mislead the public, in order to protect themselves. Bluntly, it is a rancid affair.

Amid all of this we’ve had the SNP complaining that the UK news ignores what is going on at Holyrood, after a study last week pointed to exactly this.

This structural problem with UK broadcasters means that what’s happening up here is going over the heads of a whole load of people who don’t, say, pick up a newspaper.

The SNP may be moaning. But for them — and for the advocates of devolution — it is a blessing in disguise.

Currently, about one in ten Scots want to abolish the Scottish Parliament.
If more do tune in, numbers of disgruntled viewers could go through the roof.