Scottish Leaders’ Debates were a rank and rotten embarrassment

Back to school with Smurfy and Wee Wullie.

I focused on the General Election national Leader’s Debate last Sunday and had no intention of covering this week’s Scottish leaders’ debates. So I apologise, but they say a week is long time in politics and so it proved!

In fact it felt more like a decade they were so rank and rotten I had to bring them up. Almost literally!

The leaders’ debate was an enthralling rollercoaster ride of political views, opinions and policies. It had the look and feel of a captivating game show. It had the UK’s blog and twitter-spheres going into overdrive and sent the Big Three parties into a panic.

It placed Scotland at the heart of the campaign and had many people wondering why this format had never been tried before. It was so good we wanted more.

However, this week’s debates featuring our Scottish leaders were the polar opposite and we can thank our lucky stars they were only broadcast in Scotland as they were so embarrassing.

STV’s two-hour mind-numbing slog on Tuesday hosted by the serious but dreary Bernard Ponsonby had me licking my windows it was so tiresome and turgid, especially when apologist Wee Wullie of the Lib Dums and Labour’s insincere smoothie Jim Smurfy started drooling in front of the camera.

The girls, Tory Ruth Davidson and the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, did at least hold up well their high heels did at any rate!

But if it wasn’t for the hilarious distraction caused by the member of the audience wearing a stuck-on moustache, (Dundonian rock vocalist Danny MacAfee) I would have started on the outside panes, too.

His repeated pleas of: “Moustache you a question” might have been politely ignored, but his idea to bring more humour to the debates worked and I now live in hope someone wearing a garish plastic flower on their lapel and bells on their toes will one day jump up and squirt water over everyone.

As for the BBC’s playground rammy on Wednesday featuring all six Scottish leaders, sorry weans, it really was a shambles to behold. It was so unruly, so noisy, so out of control I doubt even Miss Jean Brodie could have brought them to order.

They ran amok and beleaguered host James Cook would have better trying his hand as a Middle East peace envoy than trying to mediate over this class of delinquents.

As for hearing and considering what each had to say about their party’s policies and being grilled by the moderators, well, when you could actually hear what was being said they said nothing at all, kept to their party lines and avoided any incisive questioning like the plague.

Future budget and welfare cuts, austerity measures, tax rises, the NHS, pensions, the rising numbers of people using food banks and the European referendum were all glossed over with smarm and a sickly smile.

And of course let’s not forget the manufactured shock and hyped hysteria that has followed Nicola’s “outrageous” statement that the Scottish National Party still wants Scotland to be independent and there might indeed be another referendum one day in the future.

Nor, indeed, the mudslinging and mayhem that has erupted over the removal of Trident with the Tories accusing Milliband of being a back-stabber and saying the UK’s defence would be put at risk under any Labour coalition.

A convenient distraction if ever there was one to the pressing issues we are all greatly concerned about, namely the cuts and the hidden tax rises yet to come after May 7 regardless of who is Prime Minister and which party is in charge.

I for one want to know, and I’m sure you do too, and if these two debasing debates are anything to go by, it looks like we will be none the wiser until a new government is chosenthat’s if they can ever sit down and agree who should run it!