The poor wee SNP

Of course it was a “stunt” – the Westminster village’s preferred term for any piece of nonsense that disrupts the serenity of the mother of parliaments – and of course it was planned in advance. Pete Wishart, the SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire, tweeted that prime minister’s questions would be unusually interesting this week. 

For a given definition of interesting, that is. The SNP’s walk-out was engineered to win the party some attention and a place at the top of this evening’s Scottish news. Job done. Mission accomplished. Well done lads. It was all very reminiscent of the 1980s when Alex Salmond, among others, was forever making an exhibition of himself the better to win the SNP some – indeed any – attention at all. A howl of indignation against a world that declined to show the party the respect its tribunes felt it deserved. 

This, of course, is an Era of Hurt Feelings and in that respect the rest of the world has caught up with the SNP and its easily-bruised sensibilities. 

“My SNP colleagues and I were treated to the same braying and disrespect that we receive on a continual basis.