Tory MSP Adam Tomkins on the state of Scottish politics:

“When you have a government that has been in power for a very long time – it doesn’t really matter what the party is – after a while you get to a tipping point. The government starts thinking it’s not very vulnerable, very exposed, and it starts covering its tracks.”

“We’ve got to that point in Scotland now. It’s inevitable. I am a party political animal, but I’m not seeking to make a party political point. You could see the same happening to the Conservatives in John Major’s day in the early 1990s. The echoes in Scottish politics now to British politics then are growing more resonant almost by the day, certainly by the week.”

“The atmosphere of sleaze, I called it corruption (in the Chamber)…the atmosphere, the smell, the sense that something is rotten, something is going wrong, is growing. It’s growing more palpable. We can all smell it – we can all see it.”