For fans of political bin fires, recent weeks at the Scottish Parliament have resembled an inferno at an electric battery factory.

If you’re a sensible taxpayer/voter of a sensitive disposition, you might choose to read no further …

For those who’ve decided to proceed, please buckle up.

During my five years as an MSP inside the concrete bunker at the foot of the Royal Mile, I thought that I’d become numbed to the antics of John Swinney’s SNP.

But these masters of grubby dishonesty, breath-taking waste, greeting-faced grievance and mind-numbing incompetence still have the capacity to shock.

And that’s now complemented by the novelty act of Nigel Farage’s Reform, whose amateurism and amateur dramatics at Holyrood are a gift to the SNP.

We’ve seen £136,000-a-year transport secretary Stephen ‘mini-Swinney’ Flynn giving evidence to parliament’s transport committee.

From posturing at Westminster to smirking at Holyrood, he seemed flippantly ignorant of his brief – including details of a flammable gas escape on a CalMac ferry.

The same committee was treated to one of its members, confused SNP backbencher Collette Stevenson, asking if the government’s national transport agency was a charity.

Collette Stevenson asked if the government’s national transport agency was a charity

You may have missed Alyn Smith, the SNP innovation minister, apparently nodding off in the chamber. In his defence, Mr Swinney was speaking at the time.

Then there was education secretary Màiri McAllan (another £136,000 of taxpayers’ cash) denying hard facts about Scotland tumbling down global education league tables.

She also rejected an invitation from ex-UK government education minister Michael Gove to discuss how he transformed English schools.

Long-suffering Scottish pupils should know that this Nicola Sturgeon protégé refused to take any lessons from Mr Gove … simply because he’s a Conservative.

Sadly, this small-mindedness is consistent with the SNP’s pathological need to build barriers with our friends south of Hadrian’s Wall – and to manufacture rows with the UK government at every opportunity.

Their petty approach goes some way to explaining why Scottish patients still don’t have a multi-purpose NHS app like those elsewhere in the country. Thanks, SNP.

And why our police officers are years behind their counterparts in England and Wales when it comes to the protection of body-worn cameras. Thanks again, SNP.

I sometimes ask myself – Are there no depths to how low the SNP will sink so long as it gives them a phoney row with Westminster?

Well, I got my answer this week when it was confirmed that Scotland’s drug death rate remained the highest in Europe, for the eighth consecutive year. Last year, 1,133 lives were cut short.

Step forward Maree Todd who suggested that Westminster was actually to blame due to the Misuse of Drugs Act being reserved.

Not just nonsense, but shameless. Imagine using the tragedy of thousands of people killed by drugs to stoke a dishonest row with Westminster.

Ms Todd is just the latest SNP drugs minister to blindly pursue so-called ‘harm reduction’ policies at the expense of giving addicts the help they need – and cracking down on parasite gangsters who profit from death.

She’s not the first to suggest, although never actually explain why, devolving UK-wide laws on drug classification would save a single Scottish life.

All these SNP politicians conveniently forget that their drug consumption unit is operating when, for years, they falsely claimed that it could not because of the same UK-wide drug law.

And they also forget that Dorothy Bain, appointed Lord Advocate by Nicola Sturgeon, effectively decriminalised possession of Class A drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine.

This misguided policy was enacted five years ago despite the same UK-wide drug laws. It must now be reviewed.

Mr Swinney’s government, having long ago declared a ‘national mission’ on drug deaths, exploits the mass loss of life in furtherance of their nationalist strategy of division.

The Glasgow unit where addicts go to shoot up, at a multi-million pound annual cost to taxpayers, opened at the beginning of 2025.

Since then, drug deaths in Glasgow have risen.

When I challenged Mr Swinney at First Minister’s Questions, he said the evidence proved it was a success. And he committed to pressing ahead with more such units, starting in Edinburgh.

Last year, the Scottish Conservatives gave the SNP an opportunity to do the right thing with a proposed new law to give people the right to help – rather than being trapped in the hell of addiction.

But they, along with their Green party allies, rejected my predecessor Douglas Ross’s Right to Recovery Bill. I’m certain their decision will cost even more lives.

In response to the latest drug death figures, I and my Tory colleagues have worked diligently to challenge the SNP on their fatally failed approach.

At FMQs, I also put Mr Swinney on the spot over Ms Todd’s crass blaming of Westminster.

Following FMQs, I was astonished to hear him say that his party still wanted to decriminalise the possession of all drugs – including ultra potent and deadly synthetic opioids.

His extraordinary admission came just moment after he had acknowledged that these man-made substances already kill many Scots.

This goes to the heart of how wrong the SNP are. They devote vast sums of taxpayers’ money to support drug taking and think they’re being kind. But killing people slowly is no form of kindness.

And they also admit that synthetic opioids represent a whole new level of danger – yet continue peddling the idiotic notion that they should be decriminalised.

That’s why I wrote to Mr Swinney on Friday, urging him to rethink his reckless policy and asking him what kind of message it sends to impressionable young people.

In the midst of all this, Reform indulged in gesture politics.

Malcolm Offord, Farage’s man in Scotland, failed to challenge Mr Swinney about Ms Todd at FMQs – but then called for a vote of no confidence in her.

Knowing that it would not succeed, and having not even attempted to build a case, they then feigned anger when other parties didn’t back them.

Reform’s futile stunt came in the same week that Lord Offord walked out of the chamber as the SNP began a debate on independence.

They walked away having already submitted an amendment to the SNP’s debate motion. Many of the Reform MSPs appeared startled.

Okay, they got a couple of headlines. But as they walked away, and let the SNP off the hook, I and my Scottish Conservative colleagues went toe-to-toe.

On behalf of scunnered Scots, we used the indepdence debate to pummel the SNP over their dire record of high taxes, soaring benefits, chronic NHS waiting lists, worsening education, and rising crime.

The people of Scotland are becoming increasingly tired of the Holyrood bin fire. I get it, I really do.

But while Lord Offord’s Reform indulge in attention-seeking stunts for social media likes, I and my party will keep doing the hard job of holding the SNP to account with a firm and relentless determination.