Sketch: Alex Salmond perfects fine art of avoiding the question

Local election purdah may have meant that First Minister’s Questions were held on a different day of the week and at a different time of day, but it was impossible to avoid a sense of deja vu yesterday.

For the second week running, it was Alex Salmond’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch that dominated the exchange between the First Minister and the opposition. If the session began with a sense of deja vu then the feeling of having seen it all before was only enhanced as the three opposition leaders lined up to ask Mr Salmond the same thing.

“Was Alex Salmond a victim of phone hacking?” was the question posed in various forms by Labour’s Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson of the Tories and the Lib Dems Willie Rennie. Needless-to-say, they left the chamber none-the-wiser after their encounters with a politician who has got avoiding the question down to a fine art. Similarly, their calls for a Holyrood inquiry into phone hacking fell on deaf First Ministerial ears.

The SNP leader was “content” to rely on the London-based Leveson Inquiry, Ms Lamont said, before adding: “I look forward to hearing the First Minister answer a question under oath. I look forward to hearing him answer a question . . .”

Ms Davidson was next to try to extract an answer from Mr Salmond. “Was he hacked and didn’t speak out to protect his new best pal?” she taunted. “Did Rupert not need to bother tapping his phone because he was already on speed dial?”

Again, Mr Salmond managed to talk around the issue and as Ms Davidson raised an obscure point about Scots Law, he chided her for asking an “absolute mince of a question”.

By this stage, most were of the view that it would have been nice to get an answer whether absolute mince or not.

Next was Mr Rennie, who after asking the now obligatory hacking question, he then embarked on a bizarre flight of fancy that took him south of the Border.

“When did he switch from being a roaring Celtic lion to being a Celtic mouse in support of all things English of London courts, Trafalgar Square, Morris Dancing. Why can’t the First Minister decide to back an inquiry in Scotland?” he asked.