With fights, battles and insults there is little to admire about modern politics – Helen Martin

Whichever party we each choose to vote for, the quality of politics seems to be racing downhill.

Ruth Davidson had a verbal spat with Nicola Sturgeon at Holyrood last week (Picture: Fraser Bremner/Daily Mail/PA Wire

Increasingly it is becoming more of a gang fight and battle between parties rather than doing the best for the population. And, it has an effect on all of us.

I feel strongly that councillors shouldn’t be based on political parties because they’re not expected to produce or impost national policies, so from that point of view, they have nothing much to do with politics at all.

But government MPs and MSPs do have to consider, define and impose national policies and rules, defend their reasoning and hope the public respects, admires and benefits from their conclusions, thus build up their votes. That’s very idealistic, probably what they would love everyone to imagine, seeing politicians as clever, informed, honourable, high-ranking and admirable leaders who run a country.

Perhaps back in history, that’s really what the public thought, to an extent. Now, the way they behave is rather shameful, trying to score points over each other rather than focusing on their job, forming agreements, and delivering the best results for their countries.

For many years I was a floating voter. I voted Liberal to begin with, Labour when I was fed up with years of Tories and Tory when I was fed up after years of Labour.

The parties certainly debated strongly with each other but their speeches and arguments were covered and shared by political reporters and television interviews. We did not then, have television coverage in the House of Commons, and we didn’t even have a Scottish Parliament or a major SNP!

Now it’s all filmed and we witness the modern anger, the insults, the animosity and hostility. Westminster no longer seems a place for logical debate, information and joint decisions. It’s more like an elaborate verbal “boxing ring” or a war zone, which also now extends to interviews and every other role of politicians.

This Covid period is worse than ever because parties and governments are dealing with unique, unknown problems of which they have no experience. They are still fighting their heads off.

The exam hoo-haa went wrong. Scottish pupils protested and John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon apologised that their SQA arrangement had failed, so announced a better alternative.

Tory MSPs and Tory newspapers claimed saying “sorry” was an admission of failure and called for Swinney’s resignation. Yet they knew that same original arrangement was being followed by the Tory-run UK government. The Tory government also had to produce an alternative – but refused to apologise. Battles now (predominantly just between Tories and SNP because Labour is irrelevant here) are not just about politics, but different attitudes.

SNP politicians believe it’s correct to admit a mistake in dealing with a Covid issue, apologise, be honest with the public and resolve it. Tories believe admission and apologies are embarrassing politically and reduce their status. My floating voting is over and I’m influenced by this nonsense. I watched Ruth Davidson having a Holyrood pop at Swinney (ignoring Westminster was in the same boat) and I was delighted by her being squashed and mortified by Nicola Sturgeon. Davidson lined up for the House of Lords appals me too.

These are the issues the public like/hate, consider important, and read in headlines. It’s, for us too, all about fights, battles, insults and slagging. No longer do we consider different parties; we just support one and hate the rest.

I admit I want independence. But I still regret the collapsed, fighting, undemocratic, antagonistic, embarrassing, aggressive, quality drop of what is still our British politics.