This time last year I attended an event which looked back at the first 25 years of the Scottish Parliament. The line-up included former first ministers and deputy first ministers, cabinet secretaries past and present, as well as ordinary members of the parliament then and now. The great and the good of Scottish political commentariat were there to share their wisdom and an evening of much pontification followed.

The excitement and opportunity the new (or reconvened, depending on your point of view) parliament presented was clearly keenly felt by its early stewards, as was the sense of frustration that now in its adolescence the parliament of recent years had, like an errant teenager, lost its way somewhat. Keeping on the theme, Fergus Ewing even described his own party as having fallen in with the wrong crowd as he reflected that his recent elevation to the status of rebel had only occurred as he was doing what everyone should be doing and putting (his constituents and) the people of Scotland first. At that time of course, Humza Yousaf had still to blow up his party’s agreement with the Greens and Ewing’s dripping contempt for the party he described as “pretty extreme” was on full show.

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Offering a word of advice as to where the parliament went next Mr Ewing, in what rather ironically was to become symbolic of his potential fate within the SNP made a plea: “Can we please run out of things to ban or make free?”

Having finally navigated the briefings, whispering........

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