The status of the Scottish Parliament is being undermined by the quality of its members

As Holyrood’s transport committee drew to a close after taking two hours of evidence on the state of Scotland’s rail services, SNP backbencher Collette Stevenson had one last question. The MSP for East Kilbride, who was first elected in 2021, wanted to know if Transport Scotland, the government agency tasked with delivering major infrastructure projects, was a registered charity. 

Stevenson’s gaffe was a difficult one to understand not only because as a member of a parliamentary committee on transport you would expect her to be across at least some of the detail, but also because her own party’s manifesto had included a commitment to bring Transport Scotland “back into the Scottish Government”. 

That intention was reiterated in John Swinney’s Programme for Government speech made after MSPs returned from their summer recess. And Stevenson was among MSPs on the cross-party group who questioned transport secretary Stephen Flynn at length on the plan the following week.

When it was explained to the MSP that no, Transport Scotland is not a charity, the camera cut back to her, capturing a slightly pained expression that was already on its way to becoming a meme on social media. In the dyspeptic and hyper-partisan world of Scottish politics, Stevenson was in for a rough week. But while it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for her, the episode has once again raised questions about the quality not only of our politicians but our politics. 

That Scottish politics is currently at a bit of a low ebb is hard to deny. The previous session of parliament was dominated by the fractious debate around gender recognition reform – a law that never actually made it onto the statute book – while the police investigation into the SNP’s finances, which subsequently led to a four-year jail term for the party’s former chief executive, overshadowed nearly everything else. In May, the SNP won its fifth straight election despite polls showing the party is increasingly unpopular. Nearly half the electorate didn’t vote. 

It is against this background that every backbench bungle or ministerial misstep is clipped from parliament TV and shared on X, its algorithm prioritising content likely to elicit that most commodifiable of human emotions – anger. The week after Stevenson’s faux pas grabbed the headlines, her SNP colleague Simita Kumar went viral for a particularly inept showing before parliament’s equalities committee where she struggled to answer a question on the legal definition of gender identity. Kumar, who was elected for the first time in May, has been somewhat pitched in at the deep end after being handed the brief of equalities minister.

Flynn, too, has had a mare, telling the transport committee he hadn’t been briefed about a gas leak on a CalMac ferry. A paper trail later established he’d been told about the story – which was at that time top of the BBC Scotland website – in the half hour leading up to the committee but apparently didn’t read the email.

Most egregious of all, however, is the behaviour of Swinney himself who told MSPs Scots would “lose” their pensions because of proposed changes to the triple lock announced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in his speech to the Labour Party conference. Swinney knows that to be a lie but failed to correct the record, showing that he too is not above peddling the sort of disinformation he constantly seeks to call others out for. 

But this is not simply an SNP problem. Green MSP Kate Nevens, another newcomer, has called for a boycott of Microsoft, the parliament’s software provider, due to the company’s links to Israel after apparently mistaking the Holyrood chamber for a student union. And yesterday, the party’s co-leader, Gillian Mackay, appeared to be completely wrong-footed by a question about Israel’s right to exist and a two-state solution despite having had plenty of time to think about it since the Green Party of England and Wales passed its “Zionism is racism” motion.

Meanwhile, Reform UK called a debate on Scotland’s constitutional future a “gimmick and a stunt” before unveiling one of its own by walking out of the chamber en masse. The party which complains about wasting time on debates about Gaza and the EU then brought its own on banning the burqa. 

It all adds up to the impression that Holyrood is a deeply unserious place. 

The Scottish Parliament has never been stuffed full of political heavyweights – Scotland is a small place, and the talent pool is limited. There’s also issues with the way parties select their candidates. But it’s clear that many of our MSPs would not be commanding a near-£80,000 salary in other walks of life. That’s a problem because it plays into the dangerous and seemingly growing talk about closing the place down altogether. 

Poet Edwin Morgan once wrote that what Scotland did not want in its new parliament was a “nest of fearties, a symposium of procrastinators, or a phalanx of forelock-tuggers” but rather “persons as open and adventurous” as the building’s architecture. But while there are of course many competent and hardworking MSPs at Holyrood, we’re currently falling well short of the lofty aspirations we all had for the place – less a congress of consequence than a rabble of irrelevance.