USUALLY it’s purgatory at FMQs, but for a change we went straight to hell. There was even an impressive set of Gates. Bill and Melinda, to be precise, of Microsoft and good deed fame.
Tory leader Ruth Davidson brought them up, as she’d met Mr Gates in London the other day (namedrop? moi?), where he’d praised the admirable aid work done by the UK overseas.
Not that you’d know the UK did ever put a foot right, judging by the SNP, Ms Davidson said.
Take Nat nightingale Joan McAlpine, who recently said life in the UK under a Tory government would be “hell on earth” and “eternal damnation in a bottomless pit”.
On the one hand cuddly billionaires, “on the other, Nicola Sturgeon’s colleagues writing offensive and negative trash about our country. Who does the FM stand with: Bill Gates or Joan McAlpine?”
Ms Sturgeon had an answer to that. Her answer to everything these days.
“I will give Ruth Davidson a chance. Stand up here today, tell the chamber and tell Scotland straight: do you support the rape clause in principle, or do you, like me, think it is utterly abhorrent? Answer the question.”
Ms Davidson said if the FM didn’t like it, she could use Holyrood’s powers to change it.
“Shame!” chorused SNP MSPs. “Shame!” Ms Davidson’s brass neck was undimmed.
“The FM is always happier complaining about the UK Government than doing anything. The way the SNP is readying itself to pour negativity on this country at this election is shameful,” she retorted.
Ah, the election. Ms Sturgeon had a catchphrase for that too.
If a Tory government with a tiny majority could produce the rape clause, think of the frogs and locusts unleashed by Tories with an even bigger majority.
They would be “unfettered, out-of-control”, she said repeatedly.
“If people in Scotland want protection against a Tory Government- ”
“Vote Labour!” interjected Labour’s Neil Findlay.
“ -they will only get it from the SNP,” Ms Sturgeon carried on.
Theresa May wanted "to crush dissent so that she can do whatever she wants,” she added.
A hedgehog of Tory arms shook in outrage at the FM, who is a bit of a crusher herself.
But to no avail. Ms Davidson had been devilishly pitchforked good and proper.
Labour’s Kezia Dugdale was next into the flames, as she asked why SNP MPs abstained on holding a snap election, rather than vote for potential change at Number 10.
“I hate to be the one to point it out to Kezia Dugdale,” said Ms Sturgeon, meaning she loved it. “But it was Labour who trooped through the lobby with the Tories. She knows the lobby I mean: the one that had ‘turkeys’ and ‘Christmas’ written above it.”
Ms Dugdale’s expression suggested eternal damnation could hold no surprises for her.
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