Hamster Wars and a chorus of disapproval as sweaty men in suits slug it out

PARLIAMENT was the place to be yesterday. There were soldiers in the gallery and opera singers in the street.

I don’t know what the soldiers were doing. They were cadets and looked too young to be planning a coup. Maybe it was just their officers instructing them how to recognise the enemy.

The purpose of the operati was more plain: they were yodelling their protests against the alleged Philistines within. It gave the place a pleasant air, lifting even the spirits of those who’d never dream of joining the stuffed shirts and ghastly toffs who watch opera in halls.

Indoors, meanwhile, the sound and fury of Hamster Wars, or First Minister’s Questions, kept the mob agog. FMQs really is a hoot. Where else would you find two angry, sweaty, middle-aged men in suits taunting each other like rival football hooligans separated by a safety fence?

The pressure was on John Swinney, the Nat leader, whose future is in doot after a poor Euro-election result. Those same Euro-elections saved Jack McConnell the previous week because, after his D-Day gaffe, they resulted in FMQs being cancelled.

John rose to ironic cheers from Labour and asked Jack to explain a justice system that locked up the innocent and let the guilty skedaddle.

Jack, surprisingly, admitted the justice system was rubbish and that everything was outmoded. John said: "What has the Labour Government been using the last seven years to do if that’s the situation in the prison service just now?"

Jack said: "I will tell you what we have been doing."

A Nat voice shouted: "Hee-haw."

Jack hee-hollered that they’d got the crime-rate down and began listing other alleged achievements, his voice levelling to the drone of an industrial cleaning machine.

John piped up: "Just as fast as the police are catching the criminals, Reliance are letting them out again."

Jack had an interesting gloss on this: "One of the great benefits of contracting out services is that we are able to know where the problems are." Now, he added, everybody had a list of untoward incidents. Well, that was a different way of looking at it. A daft way, but different.

David McLetchie, the Tory leader, changed the subject to health, averring that Jack’s avowed belief in choice was "about as credible as the testimony of Frank McAveety".

As David pressed his case, Scott "Quasimodo" Barrie (Lab) had some kind of fit, getting all wound-up and shouting: "Esmerelda, the bells! The bells!" or some such.

When Tommy Sheridan (Socialist) asked Jack what he’d be discussing in cabinet, the latter said anti-social behaviour, which included "keeping undesirable characters off airline flights". This was a cunning reference to a recent incident in which Tommy had been forbidden to board a plane because of an alleged lack of ID.

Quick as a flash, Tommy retorted: "I hope that in discussing keeping people off flights, you will ensure that their dress mode is appropriate." This was a reference to Jack’s recent calamity in a kilt. I’m sorry to keep explaining the jokes, but these two are as near to a double-act as you’re going to get here. And we’re talking about a double-act with no straight man. And no funny man either.

The G8 summit at Gleneagles next year came up. This is a high-powered affair, where hugely important matters are discussed, prompting Murdo Fraser (Con) to worry that it might cause problems at a nearby road junction.

Less parochially, Murdo said he looked forward to "our own prime minister, Michael Howard" being there, prompting Jack to ask if he’d been drinking the night before.

Jack also had a pop at the Nats, saying they didn’t seem to want Scotland to be on the world stage. Well, not if he’s mincing around in his pinstriped kilt, they don’t.

Roseanna Cunningham (SNP) feared her constituents might get their stuff nicked or vandalised, which is a very cynical view to take of serious world leaders.

Back outside, the operati sang "You’ll tak the high road", and waited for Frank to appear and face the music. But Frank, the culture minister, had taken the low road, sneaking out the back door and scuttling doon the Moond.

Earlier this week, we’d heard of his court testimony recalling the "worst intimidation of my life", when two female anti-war protesters stuck their tongues out at him. To face a bunch of choristers singing "My love is like a red, red rose" would surely ruin his trousers irrevocably.