STEPHEN DAISLEY: A man so sleekit he should have a caution, slippery surface sign

Jackie Baillie has got it into her head that it’s her job to come to Holyrood and ask about health. 

Quite where Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman got this notion from is a mystery, not least to John Swinney. 

The first minister spends half his time expressing astonishment at queries being put to him and the other half studiously not answering them.

 The man’s so sleekit he should come with his own ‘caution: slippery surface’ sign.

Baillie, standing in for Anas Sarwar, noted that the SNP government’s latest NHS plan was the fifth in four years, adding: ‘I know that Biffa is suing the government, but that is not the kind of recycling that Scots are looking for.’

Booooo!

Much like BBC Scotland’s comedy output, this is no laughing matter. 

There are patients across the country who’ve been waiting for years to recover and get back on their feet, a plight Scottish Labour should be able to empathise with.

Baillie fired off bullet points of the various failings in the NHS — ‘cancer targets are missed, waiting lists are out of control, deadly disease diagnosis is delayed’ — but none seemed to hit home with the first minister.

John Swinney accused opponents of creating alarm by raising serious questions about his partys record on the NHS

‘Well, that is just what we hear from Jackie Baillie every single week,’ he pouted.

Yes, John. That’s sort of the point. Your lot have had since 2007 and the opposition is still bringing up the same problems.

Recycled NHS plans? Baillie could ask whatever questions she was putting five, ten or fifteen years ago and there’s a good chance they would be about identical failings. 

There’s an even better chance the answers would be the same self-serving spin.

But Swinney went one better than regurgitating SNP talking points: he accused Baillie of ‘creating alarm by putting those questions’.

Yes, the opposition really should stop scrutinising down Scotland. What does he think the ‘Q’ in FMQs stands for?

Swinney slipped and slid his way through the remainder of the back-and-forth, until he proclaimed that Baillie did not in fact care about NHS investment.

‘It is just politics, politics, politics for Jackie Baillie,’ he said with a matronly sigh, like Miss Jean Brodie after finding one of her girls has rolled her sleeves indecently high up her arms.

Swinney paid tribute to Patrick Harvie who has announced his retirement as leader of the Scottish Greens. He’s standing down to spend more time smashing the nuclear family.

Ross Greer, meanwhile, is expected to put his name forward for the leadership and custody of the rainbow lanyard.

Harvie demanded that Swinney restore rent controls to the private lettings market. Donald Trump had all but clinched the Economic Illiterate of the Week award, but here was Harvie piping up: ‘Hold my kombucha.’

Rent controls drive up the cost of leasing by prompting some landlords to withdraw from the market altogether, thus increasing scarcity. But, much as it pains me to say, Harvie gave a better accounting of his (wrong-headed) position than Swinney did. 

The Green leader cited the case of a tenant saved from a landlord’s attempt to double the rent, which the first minister hailed as proof the system was working.

‘Those protections ended this week,’ Harvie replied, with justified acidity. ‘They are no longer there to protect people.’

We’re supposed to be terribly impressed by this Swinney fellow but the bloke lost a logic contest with someone who believes in magical gender incantations. 

Forgive me if I have my doubts that he’s a latter-day Thomas Jefferson.

At one point Swinney, under heckling from Tory MSPs, hooted: ‘Apparently the Conservatives believe in free speech unless it’s me that’s speaking.’

First minister, if they had any sense, they’d buy you a microphone.