The phone signal was a little jaggy when my colleague called to tell me that our First Minister had joined the Falun Gong. And so, for a few glorious moments I pictured John Swinney doing public meditation exercises on Broughty Ferry beach - palms akimbo - with fellow devotees of the esoteric Chinese spiritual movement.

Sadly no. For it seems that Mr Swinney had merely decided to christen himself ‘Full-on John’ in what must be one of the most unconvincing political reinventions in recent times. Among the Scottish Government’s sprawling, multi-million suite of advisers and press officers I personally know a few who used to write clever headings for national newspapers. Surely they could have come up with something a little more eye-catching than ‘Full-on John’?

We all know what’s going on here, of course. Mr Swinney had previously been known as ‘Honest John’ until that moniker began lately to be used in a highly ironic way. How can you be ‘Honest John’ when it has become clear that you lead a thoroughly dishonest party which has cruelly hood-winked its followers into swallowing the biggest lie in Scottish politics: that they were ever serious about delivering independence in the post Alex Salmond era?

A much more condign sobriquet for Mr Swinney would be ‘John of the Dead’. The First Minister leads a zombie party on whose watch all promises and initiatives have turned to dust. Mr Swinney’s supporters in last year’s leadership election had made much of the fact that no other politician in Scotland had served longer at the highest levels of Government than him. This means though, that Mr Swinney is complicit more than any other in the failures of his government, especially after 2014.

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