Just before the Holyrood election, when things were hotting up, I was in Glasgow at a Labour event (no free wine, you get free wine at Tory events) and Anas Sarwar was there, being interviewed by Alastair Campbell no less, and he was talking about the policies he would like to implement if he became First Minister. But the gossip among the people at the event wasn’t about policies, it was about what Mr Sarwar would do after the election, which Labour was sure to lose. The No 1 question was: would he stay on as leader?

Mr Sarwar himself said he would “absolutely” stay on whatever happened, and he said he would “absolutely” stay on even after Labour’s disastrous showing at the election. But everyone knows how these things work: you cannot say you’ll cut and run because it would look bad, so you say you will “absolutely” stay on even though you probably won’t. It isn’t lying, it’s just how political dialogue works: politicians always say “I fight on, I fight to win” just before they resign, even the great ones.

A trickier problem for Mr Sarwar was the job he landed after the election. In the early days of his leadership, in 2022, he set out his party’s vision for the constitution and it included the abolition of the Lords. “The House of Lords,” he said, “must be abolished and replaced with an institution which better reflects the make-up and the identity of the UK.” And now here he is, a few years later, being appointed to the House of Lords. Awkward!

The SNP issued a very excitable press release about it. “Just when you thought the Westminster revolving door couldn’t spin any faster,” it said, “Labour has handed the Scottish public another masterclass in political acrobatics” (are we........

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