An extract from First Minister’s Questions earlier today:

That was Kezia Dugdale’s opening question. Despite the Presiding Officer making it absolutely clear that the question was improper and outwith Holyrood’s remit, the Scottish Labour leader went on to use her entire allotted time on the issue. She was then followed by Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson doing the same.

The people of Scotland are being done a grave disservice.

There are many pressing issues facing Scotland today. Indeed, the opposition parties constantly shout about the SNP neglecting them in favour of independence, although there isn’t a single bill concerning that subject on the Scottish Parliament’s timetable.

For the two main opposition leaders to waste all the time intended for holding the government to account on pushing a smear against an individual, relating to an ongoing police enquiry (in which that individual is not even currently under question), is an insult to every man, woman and child in the country whose concerns are ignored in the pursuit of political point-scoring.

FMQs is supposed to be just that – questions to the First Minister, not questions to the leader of the SNP. Michelle Thomson’s affairs are none of Holyrood’s business even if it were to be found that she’d done anything wrong – she holds no office of any kind in the Scottish Government.

(And as the FM noted in the chamber, as she’s currently not an SNP member either it wouldn’t be Nicola Sturgeon’s responsibility even if it was LOTSNPQs.)

Ruth Davidson in particular had quite a nerve raising the issue – it’s only a day since she was finally cleared of involvement in criminal activity after a police investigation into illegal ballot-sampling at the independence referendum, and she didn’t stand down from her position as Tory leader while she was the subject of that investigation.

For the two leaders to persist, even in the face of an explicit warning from the PO that they were in dereliction of their duties and in effect wasting everybody’s time, while also recklessly endangering a police enquiry (Davidson at one point even suggested putting the ongoing investigation “to one side”) is a burning, shaming indictment of the state of Scotland’s official political opposition.

Both appear unperturbed to be leading parties which are both at all-time lows in the polls, and cavalier in their disregard for the part they’ve played in making them so.

Now, we can’t say that we’re unduly bothered about the abominable current state of the Labour and Conservative parties in Scotland. Nor are we even all that fussed about their failure to properly represent the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for them. Caveat emptor, as the saying goes.

But Scotland as a whole is shamed by this pitiful calibre of politician. If every Labour and Tory MSP was to be replaced by randomly-selected Syrian refugees from the camps in Calais, the nation would almost certainly be better served.