The SNP walk out was about attention, not accountability

The SNP thinks Westminster is an anachronism but boy does it love those anachronisms.

The Nationalists’ London leader Ian Blackford got himself thrown out of the Commons for disrupting Prime Minister’s Questions. Blackford attempted to move — inartfully and tagged onto a question rather than as a substantive motion — that the House sit in private. The Speaker showed no little patience in explaining to Blackford that the matter should be raised at the end of PMQs. Of course, that wouldn’t be the optimal time for capturing the attention of political correspondents and TV news producers.

Blackford steamed away like an angry little pressure cooker, rumbling for a vote to clear the public gallery. It is an old procedural trick and the Nats deployed it to secure maximum publicity. Eventually Bercow invoked Standing Order 43 and ordered Blackford to leave, whereupon the entire SNP group got up and walked out, waving triumphantly as they did so.