Susan Dalgety

The new Scottish Parliament has never looked more female. The number of women MSPs has jumped from 47 to 58 (45 per cent) making it the highest since Holyrood was established. There are veterans of the 1999 parliament, like Labour’s legendary Jackie Baillie, whose stunning victory in Dumbarton may well have helped save the UK. And her wise counsel, honed after 22 years in Holyrood, may well help Anas Sarwar save Scottish Labour. The SNP's Christine Grahame is now the Mother of the House. The effervescent Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, will bounce into the chamber to take her seat next to Patrick Harvie. And at last, Scotland has two women of colour in Holyrood: the SNP’s Kaukab Stewart and Pam Gosal of the Tories.

Political geeks of a certain vintage are still nostalgic for that Portillo moment when, at 3.10 a.m. on 2 May 1997, Tory cabinet minister Michael Portillo lost his safe Enfield Southgate seat to a shocked Stephen Twigg. A ripple of applause ran through Britain as the result was read out, turning to screams of delight as people realised the moment signified an end to 18 years of Tory rule and the dawn of New Labour. There is little prospect of a similar earth-shaking tremor coursing through Scotland next week when the votes are counted in the Holyrood elections. The SNP will be the largest party and their Waitrose wing, the Scottish Greens, will get enough seats to justify their status as the Nationalists’ little helpers.

When Scottish Green Party co-leader Lorna Slater urges people to vote as if ‘their future depends on it’, she’s not warning the electorate about the planet’s climate crisis. Independence is what Ms Slater, a Canadian-born engineer and trapeze artist, really craves. Scotland’s Greens may brand themselves as guardians of the environment, but observers could be forgiven for thinking their primary political purpose is to act as the Waitrose wing of the SNP. The Scottish Greens exist to allow middle-class revolutionaries to reconcile their belief in solidarity with their conviction that it stops at Gretna Green and their deeply-held egalitarianism with their concern that the average SNP voter is a bit council scheme.

While the UK readies itself to emerge, blinking, from lockdown, spare a thought for those of us trapped north of Hadrian’s Wall. Scotland is in the grip of a personality cult that has elevated a mediocre solicitor from a modest background into a cross between Joan of Arc and Hillary Clinton. A Boadicea in beige stilettos and block colours. Nicola Sturgeon is lauded in the artisan coffee shops of Glasgow’s West End as Scotland’s Jacinda Ardern. Breathless London commentators swoon at her ability to memorise a brief and speak in coherent sentences. Even her political enemies, inside and outside the SNP, appear mesmerised by the confidence trick she has pulled off.