SNP chief whip Owen Thompson opens up about his trip to a 'black hole at the centre of the galaxy' – Scotsman comment

Party rebels may need to take note as Owen Thompson like computer strategy games such as Total War as well as space-flight simulators

Anyone who's ever wanted to explore the Milky Way can do so virtually in the spaceflight simulator game, Elite Dangerous (Picture: Dicky Bisinglasi/AFP via Getty Images)

There probably are politicians who live up to the exhortation in Rudyard Kipling’s poem If to “meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same”. However, we suspect not many.

Midlothian MP Owen Thompson has revealed he spent “four weeks flying to a black hole at the centre of the galaxy” after losing his seat in 2017, which he regained in 2019. We should probably clarify that he has neither invented a spaceship capable of travelling faster than the speed of light, nor lost his wits.

Instead, he did this in a video game called Elite Dangerous, an apparently realistic space-flight simulator with a to-scale representation of the Milky Way. Thompson said he was sure it was “something symbolic”. Appropriately for the new SNP chief whip, he also likes strategy games such as Total War – party rebels beware.

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for a recently defeated MP, staring into a virtual abyss. However, politicians of all hues should remember they are the pilots of our ‘ship’. If they lead us astray, they too could end up in an electoral void.