When prospective MPs and MSPs go to Politician School, it seems the first lesson they are taught is the holy trinity of political excuses.

The first of the weasel get-outs in the curriculum is the “apology” or the “I’ve said I’m sorry, there’s nothing more to see here, so let’s move on” strategy.

Future generations of aspiring public servants will, no doubt, study the infamous Michael Matheson case of 2024, when the then Health Secretary - whose sons ran up a £13,000 roaming charge on his work tablet while watching football on a family holiday - claimed the eye-watering sum back through parliamentary expenses, and then lied about it when he was caught.

But everything was okay because he apologised and, as his good friend the First Minister pointed out, he was a decent man who made a mistake.

The second of the three great political defences is to claim that your words were taken out of context. This excuse was used to questionable effect at the weekend by Ian Gribbin, the Reform UK party’s candidate for Bexhill and Battle, in relation to comments he made on social media, that Britain should have cosied up to Hitler in 1939, rather than going to war with Nazi Germany.

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One wonders what possible context it would have been appropriate to suggest that this country should have allied itself........

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