SNP get the Bills rolling

Even accounting for my natural bias, I was rather impressed with the SNP's approach to setting out the parliamentary agenda for the next year. I did wonder if they would come in all guns blazing ready for a ruck with the unionists but they've gone for the pragmatic, consensus-building approach. The Nationalists can be safe in the knowledge that anyone who votes against them on such issues as rape law, abolishing student endownments, free school meals* and bridge tolls will only come out unfavourably in the eyes of the electorate. It will be a relatively placid 12 months in Holyrood I fear.

Basically, the SNP's impressively shrewd approach seems to be why spend your first year causing fights and getting voted down in the chamber when you can save that for three years hence when you have much less to lose and an election around the corner.

An all-in strategy in the early rounds is suicide in Politics, as much as it is in Poker.


And the frustration on the unionist benches was palpable:

"All dinner and no gong" according to Nicol Stephen. "Less a Queen's speech than the musings of a man who would be King" per Annabel Goldie. They wanted something big to object to. And they didn't get it.

An all-guns-blazing SNP agenda would have been shot down in flames by the Lib Dems and Tories and they are clearly more than a little bit disappointed that they won't get their chance.

Would I have wanted more in the SNP agenda? Absolutely.

But give them three years and Salmond and Sturgeon will get around to rolling out the manifesto commitment big guns. Wendy can have her full-throated attacks, Nicol can give his mock-shock expressions and Annabel can huff and puff at those crazy Nationalists all she likes.

And I might, just might, get my student loan written off. But I'm more than happy to wait and see...




* Incidentally, I know for a fact that my nephews scrape the vegetables and half the meat into the bin every lunchtime and just eat the chips or potatoes. Free school meals is a step in the right direction but falling short of forcefeeding kids healthy food, there's only so far a Government can go. I'm sure someone with a far bigger brain than I possess, and someone other than Jamie Oliver (the legend), is already working on this one....