It’s a good idea in any workplace to keep folk on side. Generally speaking, slanging matches on the office floor are not a great foundation on which to build teamwork later. Folk tend to remember being called eejits in front of the entire workforce. There’s no point in asking to share someone’s chocolate digestives after insulting them like that – not unless you want the one that mysteriously fell on the floor.

But that’s where John Swinney finds himself today: publishing his plans for the next year in government and extending the winning smile of friendship to parliamentary colleagues he’s been publicly berating as unprincipled losers for the last decade or two – all because he can’t get his plans through without them.

It’s not just Mr Swinney, of course, it’s politics. At Holyrood, which is the definition of a dysfunctional work place, each tribe insults the others pretty much every day, and the accusation of incompetence is levelled at no one so frequently as the SNP itself. But it’s Mr Swinney who needs mates and he needs them badly. His entire programme depends on it. This will be the SNP’s toughest year in office outside the pandemic because massive savings are required and he lacks a majority in parliament.

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