‘This is Scotland’s first ever Innovation Week,’ Russell Findlay told the chamber.

Right away, I had questions. First ever? What took us so long? Shouldn’t innovation be an all-year-round thing?

But the situation was about to deteriorate further. Findlay waved around a printout of the Scottish Government’s latest Innovation Scorecard, hinting that these folks enjoy naming initiatives, and revealed that more than half of the targets were on the decline.

The SNP has come up with an innovation strategy that is making us less innovative. Which, if you think about it, is innovative in its own way.

‘Economic growth is key to the government’s priorities,’ John Swinney replied, highlighting recent initiatives by his deputy, Kate Forbes, to promote collaboration between the gaming sector and Scottish universities.

Forbes is a pro-growth voice inside the SNP. Unfortunately, she is *the* pro-growth voice inside the SNP.

The news continued to worsen, with Findlay pointing to innovation metrics from other parts of the UK. Scotland falls behind every single English region. Findlay questioned why.

The First Minister argued that Scotland had more start-ups. However, the issue lies not in launching businesses but in their eventual closures. After 18 years under a Nationalist administration, Scotland has ceased to be a viable business environment.

Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay makes his feelings clear about SNP policies at First Minister’s questions on Thursday

In fact, the Tory leader mentioned, Scotland is behind Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania.

Guess what Swinney’s answer was? Go on, give it a try.

‘Those other European countries are all independent countries with the full range of economic powers at their disposal,’ he explained.

The notion of independence suggests that gaining certain powers leads to seamless operations where tough decisions vanish, and everyone lives in bliss. This isn’t national pride; it’s a fairy tale with patriotic emblems.

Swinney expressed he was ‘pleased’ that Findlay had ‘argued the economic case for Scottish independence’. Well, John, we couldn’t wait around forever.

Findlay expressed surprise to hear the ‘independence klaxon’ sounding a mere three questions into their exchanges. ‘I thought it’d be question four,’ he quipped.

The First Minister denounced Findlay’s ‘doom-laden analysis’. You get him telt, John. He’s only quoting facts, after all, and facts have a well-known bias against the SNP.

Swinney tried to claim Scotland was more innovative than the rest of the UK — because that would be hard — before resuming his trolling of Findlay over independence. The man serves up more waffle than an all-night diner in Texas.

The Tory leader took it all in his stride, grinning while twirling his index finger around his temple. He is positioning himself exactly where a good opposition leader ought to be: right under the First Minister’s skin.

When Anas Sarwar brings up the NHS, you know John Swinney is in trouble. The Labour leader is never knowingly without a damning report, anecdote or quote about the state of the health service under the SNP.

This time it was preventable deaths, more than 800 of which have been caused by long waits in A&E. Swinney chucked everything into his response, even the recovery from Covid. 

Which is odd, because I’m sure I remember both Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf telling us that recovery had already taken place.

Sarwar pressed the First Minister on the ‘temporary’ closure of the Stranraer maternity clinic in 2018, which meant that even today women in labour were consigned to long drives to hospital and some were having their babies by the side of the road as a result.

2018? We know they can’t define what a woman is but I’d like to hear their definition of ‘temporary’.

‘What does John Swinney say to mothers who can’t access the maternity care they need because of his government’s incompetence?’ Sarwar demanded.

What he said was this: ‘Our National Health Service depends on the flow of staff coming from other countries.’ This was being made ‘extraordinarily more difficult’ because of the UK Government’s immigration policies.

It’s the Union’s fault. It’s the pandemic’s fault. It’s Westminster’s fault

Will it ever be John Swinney’s fault?