I would ban all politicians from tweeting anything - Alexander Brown

Instead of picking up the phone our leaders now seem to conduct politics through Twitter, posting letters to each other to score points rather than meeting and complaining after.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Bute House in Edinburgh.

Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that she “understood” Boris Johnson would visit Scotland this week and posted a letter inviting him to Bute House talks.

It is not known where the First Minister got the details from, but SNP MPs are already fuming she learned about it indirectly, which is basically how I feel.

You would think and perhaps expect the two administrations would be in discussions about such things, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Alexander Brown - Westminster Correspondent - The Scotsman

The visit has not been confirmed by the UK Government, not been announced by the Prime Minister, and came as a great surprise even to Tory MPs.

But Ms Sturgeon still publicly announced the offer to meet the Prime Minister to discuss how Westminster and Holyrood can “work together”.

Now ambushed by the announcement, Mr Johnson is facing either not showing up and looking like he doesn’t want to work with Holyrood or being forced to return to the building that he had to sneak out of on his last visit.

Ms Sturgeon has laid a perfect trap for a Prime Minister who treats spats the same way the Simpson’s Sideshow Bob handles rakes.

Unless of course she’s wrong about the visit. But we don’t know that yet, because Number 10 doesn't confirm these sorts of things until the last minute due to security concerns and you know, the ever changing constant chaos of running a country.

It is now common practise to see the First Minister, Douglas Ross, and the official accounts of all the main parties quote tweeting each other in exchanges so aggressive that you’d cross the street to avoid if you heard them in real life.

I would ban all MPs from tweeting anything but the fact they are running, pictures of the family dog, and an endorsement for a local restaurant.

Twitter has been great for live news, but I think it would be better for everyone involved if when it came to work, we simply logged off.

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