IN hindsight, I think Kate Forbes was being very unfair to Humza Yousaf during the SNP leadership debate on STV.

In the terse exchange, she rattled off a list of his failures in Government: the transport minister who couldn’t get the trains to run on time, the justice minister when the police were strained to breaking point, the health minister with record high waiting lists.

All of these criticisms are, of course, true. It was unfair of her to single out Yousaf like that. In an extraordinary move, Forbes declared that the record of the SNP in government to be ‘mediocre’. The entire SNP and their entire record. Why was Humza Yousaf singled out for criticism then?

If the hallmark of her campaign is honesty and candour, then why not call out the SNP government’s failures on housing and rents? On the spending of Covid money? On support for businesses and enterprises? On ferries and CalMac?

Of course, Humza Yousaf is no longer transport minister. But the trains still don’t run on time.

Of course, Humza Yousaf is no longer justice minister. But access to justice is taking longer and longer than ever before.

And Humza Yousaf’s defence was that he is the only Cabinet secretary to have avoided large-scale strikes. So, in his desperate bid to find a single achievement of his time in government, he chose to also attack his own colleagues – and key backers – in education and local government, who both saw the workforce down their tools.

For many of the pundits, the SNP leadership debate was an opportunity to break out the popcorn and watch a rare, and undignified, fight. But for Scotland, the debate was a wakeup call.

Key figures in the Government have abdicated all responsibility they have for being in that government. One moment left largely unchallenged was Kate Forbes asking where Humza Yousaf would find the money for the much vaunted (and equally despised) National Care Service – despite being the finance secretary at the time the proposals were tabled in Parliament.

And Kate Forbes claimed as her achievement an ability to stand up to the Tories at Westminster – by fighting Rishi Sunak over vital Covid funding. Which, of course, Humza Yousaf pointed out still wasn’t anywhere close to enough.

The debate was a rare moment in SNP politics. SNP ministers chose to step out from behind the army of spin doctors and press advisors, they turned the spin machine off and, for once, told us what they really think and believe: that the SNP is failing Scotland.

In the absence of independence, there is no common cause that binds them. The driving force of nationalist politics in the last decade has been the consolidation of power at Holyrood, for its own sake. What has changed is that they are no longer willing – or perhaps no longer able – to hide it.

Three candidates had an hour and half to lay out their stall to be the next First Minister of Scotland.

Yet not one of them spoke about the Scotland they want to build, or the things they want to do with power.

All they did was tear each other, and their party, down. Scotland deserves better.