Yet another debate in Holyrood was suspended today after heckling from the public gallery. The angry shouts came during a session of First Minister’s Questions, however unlike recent heckles isn’t understood to have been related to the recently passed Gender Recognition Bill. Instead shouts about North Sea oil were heard. Will the Scottish Parliament have to start considering a security screen like Westminster given this recent spate of interruptions?
If you’re wondering how free speech is coping up north in the United Socialist Scottish Republic, today a member of the public wearing a suffragette-coloured scarf (purple, green and white) was kicked out of a Holyrood select committee for breaching rules on “political” colours. All while MSPs wear LGBT rainbow lanyards…
Another woman wearing the purple, cream and white, pictured above left, was also asked to leave the room. When this issue was raised by an MSP, the chair suspended the sitting so they could talk about this momentous matter in private.
SNP’s Joanna Cheery slammed the decision to kick the women out, tweeting “It seems no rule has been broken so this woman should be readmitted or the @scotparl could face a claim of discrimination on the grounds of belief, particularly where MSPs are permitted to wear rainbow colours. This is not my Scotland.”
Making this particularly awkward is the fact Nicola Sturgeon herself has posed in Holyrood for a purple, white and green theme photo before…
The gift shop themselves sell suffragette-branded items…
The SNP in Westminster have often complained about the archaic nature of Commons rules, and said Britain’s parliament needs dragging into the twenty-first century – like their home in Holyrood. Footage from this afternoon’s plenary, however, suggests the modern ways of the Scottish parliament are getting in the way of proper debate. As many SNP MSPs struggled to define what constitutes a nightclub during their domestic Covid passport debate, out of desperation Gillian Martin pulled her phone out to debate via Google, only to provide the definition of “late opening premises” instead. Perhaps she can take some time to Google how to make a decent speech before next time…
Certainly no love lost between Douglas Ross and SNP Scottish Affairs Committee chair Pete Wishart this morning, with both at each other’s throats in the middle of the committee session.
Ross took the first swing in deriding Wishart’s chairing of the committee as ‘quite frankly inept and poor‘, with Wishart hitting back by saying ‘there’s no need at all to make attacks on the chair of this committee…I’m just trying to get on with doing my job without any personal attacks like that‘. Still seeing red, Ross then insisted “when you’re so poor at your job, I will personally attack you…it’s not erroneous if you’re so poor at your job.” Luckily the exchange was held virtually…
The fight came to an end as a furious Wishart insisted that Ross “get on with his poor an inept questions”, with Ross sneaking in the last word to say “hopefully you can calm down now, chair…”. Probably the most entertaining thing to ever come out of a Scottish Affairs Committee session of late…
It seems the tide is finally turning in Nicola Sturgeon’s favour. After multiple polls showed the SNP’s potential majority hanging in the balance, a new survey by Opinium says that the party is now on track to win an overall majority in next month’s Holyrood elections, with 53% of voters expected to select the SNP candidate as their constituency MSP, with the Tories lagging at 21% and Labour down at 18% . That’s a 7% increase for the SNP since March…
In the Holyrood regional member vote, 44% of voters chose the SNP, whilst the Tories sit at a distant second at 22%. Crucially, translating these numbers into seats would hand the SNP a parliamentary majority of 13, bringing their total number of seats to a comfortable 71…
Guido suspects the disastrous polling numbers for the Alba Party are most likely to bring a smile to Nicola Sturgeon’s face. According to Opinium, Salmond’s new pet project is unlikely to gain a single seat in Holyrood next month, polling at just 2% in the regional vote. It looks like the declining support for Labour and the Tories has fallen in Sturgeon’s favour – not Salmond’s…
It’s clear Scottish voters just don’t trust Alex Salmond. A poll by Savanta Comres yesterday showed the former First Minister’s net favourability rating stuck in the gutter at -51% (lower than Boris Johnson’s), and today’s data bears that out. Over 63% of Scots take an unfavourable view of a coalition between Alba and the SNP…
Oliver Mundell was expelled from the Scottish Parliament this afternoon after accusing Nicola Sturgeon of lying to the chamber over the Alex Salmond enquiry. Mundell was given two opportunities to withdraw the comment and refused to on both counts. As entertaining a scene as Holyrood could hope of mustering…
