A case of the Bland leaving the bland Scottish Reform party - Bruce Whitehead

I hoped the similarly caustic Holyrood Reform leader Lord Offord, who functions as a far right MSP despite accepting a Tory peerage, might have greeted the defection of Central Scotland list colleague Amanda Bland to the independent benches with a similarly witty squib.

Alas, the combative and scowling (do Offord and Thomas Kerr hold scowling classes before FMQs every week?) Faragista lacks the intellectual depth required, instead snottily denouncing her for "squatting" in her seat after being elected on Reform's central Scotland list.

But Offord raised no objections when his Reform comrade and former Conservative MSP Graham Simpson casually renounced the Scottish Tories and slid effortlessly across the greasy benches to the Reform stable in August last year.

I tend to agree that elected politicians should not change parties mid-term without going to the electorate. But when governments lurch right or left, as Tories and Labour often do, sitting members usually argue that they didn't change: their party did.

Offord is a case in point; he was appointed to the Lords as a Tory (after donating £150,000 to their coffers) but defected to Reform. Shouldn't he renounce the ermine and invite Kommandant Farage to re-en-noble him as a Reformista? Maybe he hasn't got a spare £32m bung.

Offord is quite right about the need to tackle "public sector reform, NHS inefficiency, drug death rates and homelessness." But as Jackie Baillie remarked, Reform failed to use its second place position to hold the SNP government to account, calling them a bunch of "chancers, grifters and Tories in disguise".

Ms Baillie will recall that during the Corbyn era, when I was a Labour campaigner, SNP members made exactly the same jibe, that we were "Tartan Tories"!

Can't wait to hear what Ms Bland has to say when she finally spills the beans on her reason for splitting with the "grifters"!