After the STV election debate, I have a newfound respect for dictatorship. People in North Korea might be forced to eat their own toenails and face life in a gulag if they break wind in the vicinity of Kim Jong Un, but at least they don't have to sit through 80 minutes of John Swinney and Anas Sarwar bawling over each other about the cost-of-living crisis.
Would totalitarianism be such a terrible price to pay to never again have to listen to Alex Cole-Hamilton, who has both the appearance and the political vigour of a Burton's menswear dummy? Is the ballot really worth having if it means Ross Greer being on the telly more often than Ant and Dec?
Given the tenor of the debates thus far, my expectations were low but somehow much too high. I caught myself wondering where they got these people, then remembered that, with the exception of Lord Offord, they had all been elected. People voted for them. People voted for John Swinney, in what must be the worst example of democratic decision-making since the crowd shouted: 'We want Barabbas'.
In Colin Mackay's defence, he tried. He pressed them to answer questions, got them telt when they yammered on, he even managed to stop them nattering over each other once or twice. But nothing could have saved the debate because the problem wasn't the format – STV pioneered the idea of party leaders cross-examining one another – but the candidates.
There wasn't a first minister among them, and that includes the First Minister. The same talking points ('an independent Scotland back in the EU'), same bromides ('this is your chance to vote for change'), same easy answers ('we want to tax the super rich'). Mackay's masterstroke was kicking off by asking them if they had a 'big idea' for fixing the NHS.
The Tories' Russell Findlay said frontline spending and Cole-Hamilton proposed care packages; Swinney spoke of a 'constant focus on waiting times' while Reform's Malcolm Offord wanted to cut taxes for doctors and nurses; Sarwar talked up family doctors and Greer suggested more mental health nurses and pharmacists. All perfectly respectable policies but, as Mackay pointed out, none of them could be described as big. Look at who you asked, Colin. Safe to say no one who landed on the debate while channel-surfing will have mistaken it for an episode of Mastermind.
And how slippery they all were. Swinney slid and slithered around a question about why he waited until an election to promise food price caps. Sarwar danced around repeated calls to say whether he would vote for said caps. Cole-Hamilton practically pirouetted around the issue of putting men in women's prisons. In every one of these debates, when things have got a bit lairy, the Liberal Democrat leader has shot off an over-rehearsed sigh and said: 'People deserve better than this.' When he tried it on Tuesday night, Mackay sputtered: 'Well, give them better than this.' Dear reader, he did not.
Which brings me to a man I have been less than obliging about in this campaign. I still say Nigel Farage blundered in his choice of a Scottish leader for Reform, but fair's fair: Malcolm Offord was more impressive than anyone else. That's not much of a compliment – check out the alternatives – but he stuck to his ground on taxes, immigration, Donald Trump and women's sex-based rights, even as most of his opponents showered him with sneering liberal contumely. 'I won't apologise for talking about real issues that real people are talking about,' Offord said. When he insisted it wasn't racist to be concerned about illegal immigration, when he told Ross Greer to 'grow up', when he dismissed his pearl-clutching progressive rivals as 'the middle-class parties', he performed a much-needed public service.
One after another, they prattled on about change and demonstrated why it is so needed in our clueless, fringe-dwelling political class. Every time I see them on TV, what I want to change the most is the channel.
