JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: Scotland CAN punch above its weight. Just look how huge we've become on the global comedy circuit...

Published: 20:43, 4 June 2026 | Updated: 20:57, 4 June 2026 If you were flying into Scotland 20 years ago you would have been assailed on your way to baggage reclaim by an advertising slogan asserting that you had landed in ‘the best small country in the world’. You might have thought that a stretch, wondered what metric beyond wandering puppy enthusiasm was used to compute such a conclusion. But, heigh ho, the Scots are proud of their nation. No harm in that. It was under Labour First Minister Jack McConnell that the phrase gained currency. He hoped it would boost Scotland’s image abroad and attract inward investment. But his government fell in 2007 and his successor Alex Salmond acted swiftly to axe the slogan. He didn’t think it was boastful enough, reckoned it spoke to a national inferiority complex. ‘Scotland’s only small to those who think small,’ he thundered. ‘It’s time to think big.’ So his government paid £125,000 for advertising wonks to come up with better words to plaster on posters to impress arriving passengers at transport hubs. They came up with ‘Welcome to Scotland’. Genius. I remind you of this little episode for two reasons. The party which Mr Salmond led back then is still in power. We have afforded ourselves no respite from their singular brand of genius for almost 20 years now. The second reason is that this Labour First Minister from the dim and distant – now Lord McConnell – was back in the news this week. He was warning that Scotland was heading for global laughing-stock status. First Minister John Swinney takes questions from the media on Thursday ‘This is embarrassing internationally for us now and we need to take it seriously,’ he said. We had become source material for comedians. He is not wrong. His ‘best small country in the world’ is presently the planet’s most hilarious one. You think the Trump administration has the monopoly on humanity’s funny bone? Step aside, Mr President, and make way for the pros. Think for a moment how the story which has dominated the Scottish news agenda for the past ten days plays to an overseas audience with problems of their own who could use some cheering up. A First Minister and her party’s chief executive married and living under the same roof. She runs the country from her moral high ground while he cooks the party’s books at home in a 12-year odyssey of fraud and self-gratification. He buys a £125k motorhome, an electric Jaguar, a robotic lawn mower and 1,063 other high-end items from which you are cordially invited to choose your favourite. The £110 pencil sharpener, perhaps? Or would sir prefer a titter at the £4,225 Starwalker World Time fountain pen? It gets funnier. She doesn’t notice a thing, even as her house groans with her criminal other half’s booty, even as she prepares her morning coffee with the latest of a bewildering array of four-figure machines to adorn her kitchen – or seasons her food with £2.6k pepper and salt grinders. And funnier still. She goes around telling anyone who’ll listen that the party funds her husband has been plundering have never been in better shape.  Whistleblowers in the party resign in protest at being denied access to the accounts. The First Minister says stop looking for problems where none exist. Now here come the boys in blue. They request a search warrant for the marital home which is awash with evidence of the chief exec’s insatiable spending on his party’s dime but – curiously – permission to go ahead with the raid is not granted until a fortnight later.  Any significant developments we should know about during this two-week interlude? Only the First Minister officially stepping down from her post. Let’s move on to the arrest of the now ex-First Minister. She sits there in the police station for hour after hour, saying ‘no comment’ to every question police fire at her – and on her release says she is co-operating fully with the inquiry. Does the present First Minister John Swinney have any observations about this no-comment interview? Nicola Sturgeon outside of the home she shared with Peter Murrell ‘No comment,’ he says. It’s the way he tells them. Away home the ex-FM goes and, at her convenience, she compiles a written statement for the police. Do they haul her in again to go through it with her and examine its veracity? Nope. It’s her husband they have in their crosshairs. He is charged with embezzlement in April 2024 but for reasons we are assured should not concern us the case takes its own sweet time to come to court. A hearing due to take place on February 20 is pushed back to May 25. Any significant developments we should know about during this three-month interlude? Only the Scottish parliamentary election on May 7. The party in question – the one facing a tidal wave of scandal as soon as that guilty plea was tendered – romped to victory. Lucky for them that court date was pushed back three months rather than two, eh? Funny, isn’t it, how things work out? They were laughing plenty on BBC’s Have I Got News For You. Half the programme was given over to mirth at the expense of priceless SNP power couple Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell, the sheer gift-wrapped lunacy of life in their Aladdin’s cave of de-luxe spoils.  And, with apologies to Lord McConnell, I did laugh along with them for a time. This is a criminal caper so outrageous and so excruciatingly embarrassing for the figures at the top of Scotland’s political establishment that it is nigh on impossible not to see a funny side. But again, see the story through the eyes of an overseas observer. Hear Mr Swinney berate journalists for asking perfectly sensible questions to which the public deserves answers. Listen to the rot he talks on why the last thing we need now is an inquiry. ‘You cannot get any inquiry more detailed than a police inquiry, and I think we should all respect the fact there has been a detailed inquiry…’ Who says a police inquiry is the most detailed you can get – besides squirming politicians desperate to cut off a scandal’s oxygen? By definition, police inquiries are narrow in scope. They focus on criminality. Public inquiries focus on wider concerns such as accountability, systemic failures, throwing light on shadowy areas of governance to which we have a right to information. Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell back in 2014 But Scotland doesn’t need any of that. Star-turns that we are, we’ll just keep right on re-electing the same shower of incompetents as the world looks on askance at our credulity. What is it we just don’t get about serial failure and national self-harm? Do you know, the most darkly comical element of this for me is the suspicion that, even if that Murrell plea had come days before the election rather than days afterward, the SNP would still have emerged the largest party. That is the astonishing level of denial going on in this country and the wider world is well within its rights to find it a hoot. Maybe Alex Salmond was not totally wrong. Maybe Scotland could punch above its weight. Look how huge we have become on the global comedy circuit. But Lord McConnell is right. This isn’t just funny. It’s downright embarrassing. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 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