Sketch: ‘Envy in the heart’ sparks a brighter shade of Gray

IAIN Gray is not known as one of the world’s great raconteurs. One can hardly imagine his magnetic personality shoving Tony Blair off the lucrative gravy train that transports ex-Labour leaders around the after-dinner speaking circuit.

Nevertheless he began his contribution to the legislative programme with an anecdote. “The last speech I made was at my daughter’s wedding,” Gray said. “They laughed... I cried... I only hope the result of today is slightly different.”

Fortunately, his hopes were fulfilled and we were spared the sight of Gray bursting into tears at the sight of Alex Salmond’s enormous majority. In fact, in his speech Gray yet again showed that he must have carefully stored up his most convincing parliamentary performances in case they came in handy after losing an election.

In a decent performance, he admitted to a “little envy in my heart” at the scale of Salmond’s success. “Not envy of position or patronage or pay cheque or even power itself,” Gray said. “But, yes, I confess to envy of the opportunity that power affords, because I believe all of us are here because we want to change our country for the better.”

There was now no place for excuses or blaming others for the failure of policies or legislation – especially the Referendum Bill, Gray said.

Gray then brandished a crumpled Scotsman from August 2007, which we were told he had found when unwrapping the wine glasses in his house. Perhaps he had decided to change his boozing habits after four years of drinking wine straight from the bottle. Not so, his spindoctor reassured us. Only the good glasses had been wrapped in The Scotsman. The point, the Labour leader was making, was that one of The Scotsman’s headlines read: “Alex Salmond puts independence at the top of the agenda.”

“That was 15August 2007,” said Gray with scorn. “No wonder we never got round to the rest of the agenda – forever stuck on item one.”

Earlier Salmond, in an unusually earnest speech, attacked the “voodoo economics of the London coalition”, and argued that action had to be taken to stimulate the Scottish economy. “Waiting for London to show humility and recognise our democratic mandate is not enough to deal with the urgent need to boost growth,” the First Minister said.

Salmond backed up his plan by quoting a triumvirate of distinguished economists Lagarde, Stiglitz and Roubini.

“Scotland heeds these calls from some of the finest economic minds in the world,” Salmond said.

But this Best, Law and Charlton of economic thought made little impression on Annabel Goldie. “He alludes to a string of economists – most of whom I have never heard of,” the Tory leader said.

Her display of ignorance was greeted with astonishment on the SNP benches.

The new “independence generation” of MSPs are all – no doubt – on first name terms with the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde and the famous Prof Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the 2008 crash.

They’re the economists, stupid.