For anyone who enjoys watching political chaos unfold, the past few weeks at the Scottish Parliament have been less a crisis and more a full-scale inferno.
Sensible taxpayers and voters of a delicate disposition may wish to stop reading here.
For everyone else, fasten your seatbelt.
After five years as an MSP in the concrete building at the foot of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, I assumed the conduct of John Swinney’s SNP government could no longer surprise me.
Yet its mix of grubby political tactics, extraordinary waste, manufactured grievance and baffling incompetence continues to find new ways to shock.
Now the SNP has another unlikely advantage: Nigel Farage’s Reform, whose amateurish performance and theatrical antics at Holyrood have proved an unexpected gift to the governing party.
Consider the appearance before Parliament’s transport committee by Stephen ‘mini-Swinney’ Flynn, the transport secretary whose salary is £136,000 a year.
Whether posturing at Westminster or smirking at Holyrood, he appeared remarkably casual about his own brief, including the details of a flammable gas leak aboard a CalMac ferry.
The same committee also heard from Collette Stevenson, a confused SNP backbencher who asked whether the Scottish Government’s national transport agency was a charity.
Collette Stevenson asked whether the Scottish Government’s national transport agency was a charity
You may also have missed the sight of Alyn Smith, the SNP’s innovation minister, apparently nodding off in the chamber. In fairness to him, John Swinney was speaking at the time.
Then came education secretary Màiri McAllan, another minister receiving £136,000 from taxpayers, dismissing hard evidence that Scotland has fallen down international education league tables.
She also declined an invitation from former UK education minister Michael Gove to discuss his reforms of English schools.
Scottish pupils facing the consequences should note that this protégé of Nicola Sturgeon chose not to learn from Mr Gove—not because of the substance of his record, but because he is a Conservative.
That narrow-minded attitude reflects the SNP’s long-running desire to erect barriers between Scotland and its friends south of Hadrian’s Wall, while picking fights with the UK Government whenever possible.
It may also help explain why Scottish patients still lack a multi-purpose NHS app comparable with those available elsewhere in the UK. Thank you, SNP.
It also helps explain why police officers in Scotland remain years behind their counterparts in England and Wales in access to body-worn cameras. Thanks again, SNP.
At times I find myself wondering whether there is any depth to which the SNP will not descend if it helps create another manufactured dispute with Westminster.
This week supplied an answer. Scotland’s drug death rate was confirmed as the highest in Europe for the eighth year in a row, with 1,133 people losing their lives last year.
Maree Todd then stepped forward to suggest that Westminster was ultimately responsible because the Misuse of Drugs Act is a reserved matter.
Not just nonsense, but shameless. Imagine using the tragedy of thousands of people killed by drugs to stoke a dishonest row with Westminster.
Ms Todd is just the latest SNP drugs minister to blindly pursue so-called ‘harm reduction’ policies at the expense of giving addicts the help they need – and cracking down on parasite gangsters who profit from death.
She’s not the first to suggest, although never actually explain why, devolving UK-wide laws on drug classification would save a single Scottish life.
All these SNP politicians conveniently forget that their drug consumption unit is operating when, for years, they falsely claimed that it could not because of the same UK-wide drug law.
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And they also forget that Dorothy Bain, appointed Lord Advocate by Nicola Sturgeon, effectively decriminalised possession of Class A drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine.
This misguided policy was enacted five years ago despite the same UK-wide drug laws. It must now be reviewed.
Mr Swinney’s government, having long ago declared a ‘national mission’ on drug deaths, exploits the mass loss of life in furtherance of their nationalist strategy of division.
The Glasgow unit where addicts go to shoot up, at a multi-million pound annual cost to taxpayers, opened at the beginning of 2025.
Since then, drug deaths in Glasgow have risen.
When I challenged Mr Swinney at First Minister’s Questions, he said the evidence proved it was a success. And he committed to pressing ahead with more such units, starting in Edinburgh.
Last year, the Scottish Conservatives gave the SNP an opportunity to do the right thing with a proposed new law to give people the right to help – rather than being trapped in the hell of addiction.
But they, along with their Green party allies, rejected my predecessor Douglas Ross’s Right to Recovery Bill. I’m certain their decision will cost even more lives.
In response to the latest drug death figures, I and my Tory colleagues have worked diligently to challenge the SNP on their fatally failed approach.
At FMQs, I also put Mr Swinney on the spot over Ms Todd’s crass blaming of Westminster.
Following FMQs, I was astonished to hear him say that his party still wanted to decriminalise the possession of all drugs – including ultra potent and deadly synthetic opioids.
His extraordinary admission came just moment after he had acknowledged that these man-made substances already kill many Scots.
This goes to the heart of how wrong the SNP are. They devote vast sums of taxpayers’ money to support drug taking and think they’re being kind. But killing people slowly is no form of kindness.
And they also admit that synthetic opioids represent a whole new level of danger – yet continue peddling the idiotic notion that they should be decriminalised.
That’s why I wrote to Mr Swinney on Friday, urging him to rethink his reckless policy and asking him what kind of message it sends to impressionable young people.
In the midst of all this, Reform indulged in gesture politics.
Malcolm Offord, Farage’s man in Scotland, failed to challenge Mr Swinney about Ms Todd at FMQs – but then called for a vote of no confidence in her.
Knowing that it would not succeed, and having not even attempted to build a case, they then feigned anger when other parties didn’t back them.
Reform’s futile stunt came in the same week that Lord Offord walked out of the chamber as the SNP began a debate on independence.
They walked away having already submitted an amendment to the SNP’s debate motion. Many of the Reform MSPs appeared startled.
Okay, they got a couple of headlines. But as they walked away, and let the SNP off the hook, I and my Scottish Conservative colleagues went toe-to-toe.
On behalf of scunnered Scots, we used the indepdence debate to pummel the SNP over their dire record of high taxes, soaring benefits, chronic NHS waiting lists, worsening education, and rising crime.
The people of Scotland are becoming increasingly tired of the Holyrood bin fire. I get it, I really do.
But while Lord Offord’s Reform indulge in attention-seeking stunts for social media likes, I and my party will keep doing the hard job of holding the SNP to account with a firm and relentless determination.
