Sketch: Kate Campbell says the quiet part out loud

There was a rare bit of brutal honesty during Holyrood’s debate about whether to launch a parliamentary inquiry into issues relating to Peter Murrell’s embezzlement of the SNP.

Newbie Nationalist MSP Kate Campbell admitted, about halfway through her speech, that her party should not have won the election. You’d have expected someone who was an experienced councillor not to score such an own goal, but clearly, she’s learned very little from time in Edinburgh’s city chambers.

Maybe it’s the seat she now occupies. Could there be something in the water in Edinburgh Eastern? Its previous holder was Ash Regan, a woman most remembered for calling for an installation of a giant thermometer in Glasgow or Edinburgh, and for saying that prostitution couldn’t be pushed underground because how could punters get to “women in underground cellars with a locked door”.

Or perhaps Campbell was just trying to lean into the title of the debate, which was about restoring public trust in politics. Naturally that will require some honesty from all our politicians, and so she was just uttering her truth.

Whatever the reason, the SNP backbencher (a position she has probably now firmly secured for the next five years) stood up in the chamber and said this was “an election that frankly we had no business winning after 19 years in government”. Cue some table thumping from the opposition benches, and some shocked faces among her own.

While she may have hit the nail on the head, she has also hammered her future prospects

She was attempting to make the point that politicians who had spent the campaign “slinging mud” had lost. The reason Anas Sarwar is not first minister today is because “in place of having policies, Labour just has a visceral hatred of the SNP”, she explained, somewhat clumsily. “That approach was roundly rejected,” she added.

It was, as Reform MSP Graham Simpson later described, an “extraordinary contribution” to the debate. But most extraordinary of all is that it offered a rare glimpse of an SNP politician showing some humility. Her diagnosis of the election result, after all, is right: the SNP did not win because Scots have a great love for the party (look at the huge dip in votes) but because no other option looked like a government-in-waiting.

Sadly, this level of political nous often goes unrewarded within the SNP, so while she may have hit the nail on the head, she has also hammered her future prospects.

One who is likely to go much further is party colleague Jack Middleton. He told the chamber Aberdonians had “put their trust in me” because he’d spent the campaign focused on the issues that matter rather than criticising others. “I won that election by 7,000 votes. Shortly after that result was announced, Anas Sarwar, who was humiliated, was forced to concede the election,” he said. That concession was all down to one man: Middleton.

But magnanimous in victory, he does offer some wise words to the chamber. “The old Confucian maxim teaches us there are 1,000 lessons to learn in defeat. I regret to inform the chamber that private schoolboy Anas Sarwar has failed to learn just one.” Ouch. What happened to the kinder politics the SNP was supposed to represent?

Sarwar was having none of these excuses. He said the SNP’s amendment to the debate, which urged politicians to focus on issues that matter, was “an attempt to muddy the waters”.

Let’s just forget about Keir Starmer, eh? I mean, why not

Yet when MSPs raised questions about Labour’s role in undermining public trust in politics, he had little to say. He claimed some SNP ministers had been “shielded from scrutiny”, apparently forgetting that Peter Mandelson was shielded from proper vetting so the now disgraced peer could still be handed a plum job.

Other Labour MSPs tried to plough on. Pauline McNeill acknowledged a lack of trust “in all of us” but argued the SNP had the biggest role to play. Let’s just forget about Keir Starmer, eh? I mean, why not, when so many in Labour are keen to ignore who the PM is – including the Scottish Labour leader. 

Daniel Johnson accused minister Jamie Hepburn of having misinterpreted the Nolan principles on ethics in public life. Hepburn – who, lest we forget, lost his job mere months ago for man-handling a colleague – replied that he “recognises” those principles. Well, awareness is one thing, delivery quite another.

“Accountability, transparency and trust in public and political life matter,” the minister continued. This was too much for Jackie Baillie, who yelled from her seat: “Not to you.”

The tenor of the debate did not get any better over its two and a half hours. Indeed, Green MSP Patrick Harvie summed up the debate best when he had to briefly delay the start of his closing speech. “I beg your pardon, presiding officer, I was just discovering how much some speeches improve when I remove my hearing aids.”

If only the rest of us had the luxury of not having to tune in.