Back to HOMEPAGE Plodding Gray loves to go a wandering
straight off the beaten track
Magnus Linklater
Holyrood Sketch: The TImes
Filed 23Jan10
©Magnus Linklater
This article was originally published in The Times on 22nd January 2010.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
The things that really get MSPs going are the ones that are massively irrelevant. Ask them about measures to improve the Scottish economy, or whether enough schools are being built, and they will furrow their brows and put on a display of dutiful concern. But offer them the chance of embarrassing a minister caught up in some minor gaffe and the whole place lights up.
We have not heard much from Roseanna Cunningham since she became Environment Minister, but we know enough about her radical views to suspect that she has not been spending her time striding over the moors, listening intently to landowners as they complain about the impact of birds of prey on this year’s grouse season.
When, therefore, they picked up the Daily Record yesterday and read about Ms Cunningham’s plan to allow hairy ramblers to stroll through the very purlieus of the Queen’s own Scottish castle at Balmoral, they rubbed their hands in glee. Several clichés slipped easily into place. Here was “Red Roseanna”, whose republican instincts are well-known, acting true to form and cocking a snook at royalty. Here was a newly-appointed minister allowing her personal prejudices to dictate policy. Here was a chance to expose Alex Salmond to ridicule and contempt.
There, of course, is the rub. For Mr Salmond also reads the Daily Record. Or, if he doesn’t, he knows a man who does. That meant that when Iain Gray, the Labour leader, rose to his feet, armed with this delightful tale, ready to subject his opponent to the full weight of his withering irony, Mr Salmond was more than ready for him. It was then that things began to go horribly wrong.
For Mr Gray does not do withering irony very well. Indeed, Mr Gray does not do it at all. While Mr Salmond is a past master at it. Armed with the full correspondence between his Environment Minister and the Home Office, he was able to demonstrate that she had simply been following procedure. Or, if she hadn’t, then Mr Gray did not have the ammunition to prove that she hadn’t.
Net result — while the Labour leader plodded doggedly across the First Minister’s front lawn in a vain attempt to establish his right to roam, Mr Salmond peppered him gleefully with gunshot from the parapet of his well-defended citadel. “Now Iain Gray has the facts, would he like to retreat from the absolute, total ridiculous absurdity of his position?” he demanded.
Oh dear, and it was meant to be the other way round.
Finis
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