It’s all so unfair on our MSPs. In Westminster, thanks to the resolution of recent unpleasantness in Northern Ireland, you can spurn the oath of allegiance and yet bag the salary, office, and expenses. In Scotland, decline the pledge and within weeks there’s a by-election in Glasgow Auchtersleaze and Auldclaybiggins.
A Protracted Process
But Holyrood’s Thursday morning diet of ‘Oaths and Affirmations’ is no less jolly unfair on us. With so many determined to virtue-signal, nudge-nudge insult the Crown, wink at cooing grandkids in the gallery, or repeat the formula in every tongue from Lallans to Klingon, proceedings are agonisingly protracted.
And how diminished they all seem. Last week, big beasts were dinging lumps out of each other on the campaign trail. Today, they are demure, nervy, biddably directed and redirected by officious ladies like the first day of high school. They even get a toilet-break at 10.14, and another, sensibly, before we start on the names beginning with M.
First Minister’s Sermon
John Swinney sermonises immediately. ‘The primary loyalty of the Scottish National Party,’ he grates, ‘is to the people of Scotland, in line with the constitutional principle of the sovereignty of the people…’ Collective eye-roll, as he nevertheless takes the oath. Malcolm Offord is next down the ramp, strained and uneasy, as if he cannot quite remember where he parked a yacht.
Floral Displays and Faux Pas
And – my – didn’t florists do well? Ross Greer trips down with a vast pink confection on the wrong lapel. At least he doesn’t hoist a clenched Internationale fist this time. He tried that in 2016 and it had all the street-cred and edge you’d expect from a Fifth Year in charge of the church camp bookstall. Alex Cole-Hamilton has a fizzy white posy by his tie knot. Karen Adam, recovering from her fright-hair moment at the hands of Reform in Banff and Buchan Coast, sports a white rose the size of a Savoy cabbage. But, having sworn, she then takes the oath again in International Sign Language, hands arcing silently in the air. It’s sinuous, beautiful and – for me – the speech of the day. For her profoundly deaf father: she’s his primary carer.
One red rose is so enormous it seems set to take the oath in its own right, Claire Baker (Lab, MidScotland and Fife) little more than its rucksack. Quite a few MSPs are broader than they are tall. Some blokes are huge. Russell Findlay makes his entrance, great mitts extended sideways as if his armpits had piles. The SNP’s George Adam is a startling vision in mauve; Cowdenbeath’s David Barratt is the first to brave a kilt. And so they come, one after another, jumpy or simpering or ever so slightly overawed.
Unusual Affirmations
Not that it’s a high bar. A decade ago, the late Sir James Angus Rhoderick Neil McGrigor was ironically applauded when he finally managed to complete his full name. Maggie Chapman is sporting some sort of keffiyeh. She repeats her affirmation in Shona, the Zimbabwean tongue of the late, appalling Robert Mugabe. Who’d have loved her enthusiasm for land reform. Iris Duane (nope: me neither) can’t resist a self-demeaning dig at the monarchy. Laura Mitchell (SNP, Moray) brandishes a chunk of charred wood: homage to a Burghead fire ceremony.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our new Western Isles MSP turns up with a cured gannet? Alas, wee Donald MacKinnon must have left it in the porch: naturally, he reprises his oath in Gaelic.
Flubs and Repeat Attempts
There are flubs. Heather Anderson (Dundee City West) is not allowed to get away with allegiance to the King’s ‘heirs and accessors according to law.’ Kenny Gibson and Stephen Flynn likewise have to repeat some lines – and then there is Q Manivannan. Green. Transgender. Non-binary and on a student visa which is due to expire by the end of the year. ‘I make this affirmation for the people of Scotland and their care,’ simpers Manivannan. ‘My bonnie, bonnie, home…’
