Tom Peterkin: Salmond-speak is now a matter of public record. It’s a landmark day for Scotland ... in terms of the debate

What larks, what fun and what downright jolly japery has abounded in the parliament this Halloween season. We haven’t quite got to the stage where MSPs eat treacle scones off a string in Holyrood’s members’ restaurant before dookin’ for apples in the garden lobby (perhaps the presiding officer could think about organising that for next year). But – oh joy, oh rapture – the super new game, described in this column last week, has been recorded for posterity on the parliament’s official record.

At the risk of repetition, regular readers may recall that last week this space explained how some of the lowlife creeping around the Holyrood corridors have devised a verbal game based on the phenomenon of Salmond-speak. It has its origins in the First Minister’s appearance on Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics show. Salmond answered “We have, yes” when Neil asked him if he had advice from law officers on EU membership. Later the First Minister attempted to argue that what appeared to be a straight-forward answer in the affirmative, actually meant something completely different when it emerged that no such specific legal advice had been sought.

Salmond claimed he had been selectively quoted and that somehow his “yes” answer had been qualified by his words which followed it, where were “in terms of the debate. You can read that in the documents that we have put forward…blah, blah.” Players derive innocent amusement by copying Salmond’s language to signal that something they have just stated as fact is something they actually believe to be false. So, when someone sinks their umpteenth pint in “Margo’s”, the new Holyrood bar, his drinking companion might remark: “Your wife must be delighted that you’ve managed to cut down on your drinking…(pause)…in terms of the debate…”

The game has now moved from idle bar-room chit-chat to the serious business of government. The first MSP to get the magic ITOTD words on McHansard was the Tory Gavin Brown, who was sceptical about the level of consultation carried out for the Unoccupied Properties Bill. Brown addressed local government minister Derek MacKay saying: “The minister seems to say, ―we did consult ‘in terms of the debate’, but does he think that important sections of primary legislation should be excluded from formal consultations?”

Yesterday the game was endorsed by the Labour leader Johann Lamont, who took home a Scotsman to swot up on the rules. So, when Salmond appeared at First Minister’s questions and gave what she regarded as an unsatisfactory answer on his plans for a Sterling-zone, she replied: “In the First Minister’s own words, that was a very, very convincing response…(pause)…in terms of the debate.”

Surely history will record this as a telling contribution in the battle for Scotland’s constitutional future…in terms of the debate.