On Monday, he was shocked; on Tuesday defiant; by Thursday, he was cranky. John Swinney’s first outing at First Minister’s Questions in this new session should have been a victory lap. Instead his plan to bathe in the glow of electoral success and talk up independence was bazookaed by former chief executive Peter Murrell admitting to embezzling more than £400,000 of SNP party funds.

It’s been a bad week for the resident of Bute House, obviously. The first minister is a combative politician who loves a robust exchange of views, and is usually chipper and upbeat with it. But not right now. Mr Swinney’s mood over the Murrell affair as publicly expressed is somewhere between irritable and sulphurous. That angry tone is something he may come to regret. The tension built up all of last week.

On Monday, Mr Swinney expressed his horror on behalf of SNP members – “the decent people who have stood with me at coffee mornings and jumble sales and thrift shops, raising the money” – sounding understandably miserable about the whole sorry affair. Then on Tuesday he fielded questions in the chamber from opposition politicians who have long attacked what they brand the SNP’s autocratic, secretive style of management.

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By Thursday he’d clearly had enough. The persistent questions had moved on from “how could she not have known” to “what does it say about the culture of your party that those who asked questions about the party’s finances were ignored or pushed out?” and he was clearly........

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