We’re not going to join in the attacks on a nurse who criticised Nicola Sturgeon during last night’s BBC election debate. While her lifestyle seems at a glance to be wildly at odds with her claim that she relied on foodbanks to survive, there are – genuinely – possible explanations for at least most of it.

Her daughter could have won a free scholarship to the £11,000-a-year George Heriot’s school. Family and friends could have paid for her five-star holidays to New York and frequent dinners in expensive restaurants. She lives in Stockbridge, which is a quite expensive area of Edinburgh – in itself the most expensive city in Scotland – where wages might not stretch as far as elsewhere.

Owning a convertible car isn’t proof that someone’s wealthy – I have one myself that’s worth less than £1000, and I also have a relative who has very little money but who nevertheless owns a horse just like Claire Austin’s daughter seemingly does. (It’s also possible to be quite poor but still own things you bought when you were less poor.)

It ill befits Yes supporters – who are happy to deploy the existence and growing use of foodbanks to justifiably attack the UK government – to complain if someone who calls the First Minister “wee Jimmy Krankie” adopts the same tactic. More to the point, we entirely agree with Ms Austin’s core view that nurses should be paid more in general, as we suspect most people do.

(And in Scotland, of course, they ARE paid more than in the rest of the UK, and under the SNP have always been given the full pay rises recommended by the independent pay board, which hasn’t been the case in England.)

But that still leaves some things hanging disquietingly in the air.

————————————————————————————————

1. Why was Ms Austin specifically invited by the BBC to ask a question about a devolved issue in a Westminster election debate?

The large bulk of last night’s programme was rather bizarrely taken up with discussion of issues on which the election can have no impact because they’re devolved to the Scottish Parliament, such as education and health.

What that did was ensure the debate was weighted significantly in favour of one of the two parties who are the main combatants – the Tories. When the discussion focuses on devolved issues the SNP are put under scrutiny and pressure for their record but the Conservatives get to escape scot-free.

If an audience member happens to bring a devolved issue up spontaneously during an unscripted part of the debate, it should still strictly be dismissed as irrelevant – just like if Theresa May was doing a radio phone-in (LOL, we know) and someone rang up to complain about the penalty Celtic were awarded last Saturday – but in live TV these things happen and sometimes you just have to roll with it.

But specifically inviting someone in the full advance knowledge you planned for them to ambush one particular panellist with an off-topic question is a lot dodgier.

2. Who does Ms Austin want to solve this problem, and how?

We can safely assume that anyone who calls the FM an insulting name popular with Unionist trolls isn’t going to be a big SNP fan. But who in this election is proposing a big pay rise for nurses?

Certainly not the Tories, and Labour are simply making their usual vague, meaningless noises about “the pay increase they deserve” without putting any sort of figure on it or explaining how they’d pay for it. Kezia Dugdale was allowed to get away without any questioning when she opportunistically joined in with the attack.

3. How is Ms Austin actually getting food from foodbanks?

You can’t just rock up at a foodbank and ask for some free grub if you feel like it. You generally have to be referred in writing by the DWP or some similar organisation, and if you – by your own admission – have a full-time job paying almost £8000 above the “National Living Wage” (which is currently £14,625pa for a 37.5-hour week) you might have a tough time getting that letter.

“My daughter’s horse is short of oats and I can only afford a relatively cheap brand of champagne for my parties” probably won’t cut it with the Trussell Trust.

4. When is a living wage not a living wage?

Of course, that raises another issue. If a nurse really can’t manage on £22,345 a year, how can you possibly call a figure that’s £8,000 shy of that a “National Living Wage”? But that’s a question that only the UK government can address – the minimum wage is reserved – so why was it only put to Nicola Sturgeon and not Ruth Davidson, who was after all the UK governing party’s representative in a UK election debate?

————————————————————————————————

It’s possible that Ms Austin’s account of her circumstances was somewhat less than entirely frank. We don’t know, and either way we certainly don’t blame her for trying to get a better deal for nurses even if she’s largely blaming the wrong people.

But both her claims and the “vile cybernat witch-hunt!” smokescreen that’s been blown up around them by Unionists (thanks to a handful of stupid and counter-productive Yes supporters going off half-cocked about unconfirmed and false rumours) mask the real mysteries that the debate and her appearance on it threw up.

It’ll be interesting to see if any of them are resolved in the coming hours and days.