By Editor,Stephen Daisley

Copyright dailymail

It was a fairly humdrum edition of First Minister’s Questions, all things considered. The usual back-and-forth between John Swinney and Russell Findlay. Anas Sarwar spruiking the Starmer government’s record on Scotland. A toadying question or two from the SNP backbenches.

Not much for your humble sketchwriter to work with. Then Douglas Ross got up with a point of order, telling Swinney: ‘As I left the chamber yesterday, I was physically assaulted and verbally abused…’

You could have heard a pin drop, namely the one off the grenade Ross was about to chuck in Swinney’s lap.

He concluded: ‘… by your Minister for Parliamentary Business, Jamie Hepburn.’

A gust of gasps swept the chamber. One MSP accusing another of assault is, as best as I can recall, unprecedented.

Ross says Hepburn got in a flap over questions about a seagull summit. Elgin, in Ross’s Highlands and Islands region, has been bedevilled by the winged menaces of late.

In scenes reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, locals and their property are coming under routine attack from belligerent gulls.

The Tory MSP alleges that, after he ruffled Hepburn’s feathers in the chamber with questions about the summit, the minister grabbed him by the shoulder, began swearing at him, and continued to tighten his grip.

Hepburn wasn’t in the chamber to hear the charges levelled against him. I understand Ross had hoped to question Swinney directly and emailed Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone yesterday morning about doing so. However, he wasn’t called during the 45-minute Q&A session.

A stunned-looking Swinney told journalists waiting outside the chamber that he would consider Ross’s accusations.

Earlier, the First Minister had come under interrogation from Ross’s successor about social security spending. Russell Findlay wielded the latest Audit Scotland report as a cudgel with which to pummel the government. He said the auditors had discovered a £1.2 billion black hole in the welfare budget. An annual £1.2 billion black hole.

Wait, you’re telling me the SNP can’t manage a budget? Wow. That surprises me. This is my surprised tone.

The real divide in politics is not between right and left but between those mindful of human nature and those in denial about it. Swinney falls into the latter category.

When Findlay asked why Social Security Scotland lacked any mechanism to detect fraudulent claims or erroneous awards, Swinney piously pronounced that the system was ‘designed to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable people’.

The First Minister’s heart is in the right place but you’d need a search party to locate his brain. A system designed without fraudsters in mind is a system advertising itself to be defrauded.

Swinney means well but his good intentions and idealist politics blind him to human nature: if genuine claimants face no hurdles then neither do swindlers, and the more cash that goes to swindlers the less cash — and public sympathy — there will be for the genuinely needy.

Instead, he accused Findlay of wanting to ‘pursue and harass vulnerable people’. This right here is why the left always fails: the sentimental refusal to confront human nature. Everything good the left creates is eventually undone by its reluctance to make a moral distinction between the deserving and the undeserving.

Another former Tory leader, Jackson Carlaw, had some fun with Swinney’s recent visit to Washington D.C. and apparently warm relations with President Trump. The Eastwood MSP was up to mischief, of course, knowing how averse SNP backbenchers are to The Donald.

‘It fair gladdens all our hearts,’ he purred. ‘In fact, I feel the hearts of the Scottish Greens melting.’

‘Jackson Carlaw knows how to bring hilarity into the parliamentary chamber,’ Swinney smiled.

‘Not the way you do,’ Jackie Baillie piped up from the sidelines.

‘I’m glad I’m conveying so much bonhomie today,’ Swinney shot back.

Buddying up with Trump, attending royal dinners. If only he’d give up on this independence nonsense, I could get to like this fellow.