Standard of Scottish politics is the loser in coalition blame game - Euan McColm

If the tone of Scottish politics gets any shriller, it’ll be audible only to dogs.

From the screeching fury chimps of the internet all the way to the top of government, participants in our national debate seem unable to interact like normal human beings. Rather, they race from nought to 60 within seconds of opening their mouths.

Language is routinely twisted to such a degree than good faith disagreement is impossible; corrupting spin means even the most innocuous statement may be reshaped into some outrage or other.

And it is now standard practice to blame one’s own failings on the actions of one’s opponents.

Scottish Green Party Co Leader Lorna Slater speaking at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh, during a debate, following the death of Southend West MP Sir David Amess, as MSPs returned from recess. Picture: PA

This tactic has been normalised by the SNP in government. No matter the ministerial cock-up in question, we can expect to be told that, actually, the problem is that “Westminster” retains control of the “levers of power”. It’s not that the minister is incompetent, it is that he is hamstrung.

Why take responsibility for your own actions when you can point the finger and scream abuse at an opponent?

As the SNP sinks deeper into a bubbling quagmire of scandal, with senior figures arrested as part of a police investigation and former allies turning on each other, new First Minister Humza Yousaf has deployed a rare double deflection. He now asks us to believe that two thwocking great examples of Scottish Government inadequacy are, in fact, entirely down to the actions of others.

Of course, the guilty party is the UK Government, whose members, the SNP would like us to believe, enjoy nothing more than idling away their days conspiring against plucky old Scotland.

Whether it’s messing up legislation on making it easier for trans people to change their sex as recognised in law, or botching a deposit return scheme for bottles and cans, we are to accept that things went wrong not because of the ineptitude of MSPs but the malevolence of the UK Government.

The deposit return scheme – DRS – has been a hugely controversial piece of legislation. Not because of its intention – the argument in favour of increased recycling was won long ago – but because of the way it has been handled by Lorna Slater, the Green Party minister in charge of the project.

Businesses have complained that, while large corporations could easily absorb the costs involved, for small producers mandatory participation in the DRS would be crippling. There was also the issue of companies being forced to charge different prices for products sold on either side of the border. For this problem to be solved, the UK Government would have to exclude the scheme from the Internal Market Act.

On Tuesday, Yousaf announced that the scheme – which was due to launch in August – would be delayed until next March. The First Minister said he and Slater had listened to the concerns of businesses. But he also hit out at the UK Government for failing to provide that exemption from the IMA.

Bad old Westminster had got in the way again.

You may have to take a seat as I break the shocking news that this is not quite the case.

In fact, Slate r – the minister who expected to have the scheme ups and running by August – did not formally request the exemption until March 6 of this year.

The Scottish Government points to a letter send by former deputy first minister John Swinney to UK ministers in January as proof that the request was made earlier but the text of that letter doesn’t support that assertion. Swinney wrote to Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove that he hoped they’d “expedite a rapid solution including an exclusion to the IMA, if that is required”. It was not for UK ministers to decide whether it was required or not – after all, the legislation hadn't been completed. Swinney’s letter makes clear the Scottish Government had not reached a position on the matter.

The DRS is a mess because of the incompetence of Lorna Slater, a politician who gives the impression of being perpetually surprised by the basics of politics.

Not only is the UK Government to be blamed for the deposit return scheme fiasco, it is to be castigated for the mess that is the Scottish Government’s plan to reform the Gender Recognition Act.

Last December, a majority of MSPs voted in favour of allowing trans people to self-identify as the sex they wished to be seen as in law.

In January, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack announced the use of section 35 of the Scotland Act to block the legislation on the grounds that it would impact on the UK-wide Equality Act of 2010.

Yousaf has decided that his priority as First Minister is to legally challenge this move. He and his colleagues insist they have no choice but to act to defend Scottish democracy.

There will now be a costly court battle over whether the Scottish Parliament has the right to make the legislative changes proposed.

Already, members of the SNP-Green coalition have begun explaining why – even if they lose the court case – the UK Government is at fault.

If you’ve been following this one, you’ll have heard assorted nationalist MSPs explain that at no stage during the legislative process did ministers at Westminster raise any concerns.

This suggests that those politicians would have been perfectly happy for members of the UK Government to have stood, looking over their shoulders, while they went about their business.

Can you imagine what would have happened had UK ministers butted in while the Scottish Parliament discussed this legislation? It would have been intolerable.

But since the outrage of Westminster meddling is not available, we must make do with the outrage of Westminster not meddling.

All this heat and flash might distract, for a moment or two, from the very real scandal engulfing the SNP but it does nothing to improve the standard of our political debate.