With the general election campaign scarcely begun, we are already seeing repeated pleas – demands might be a better description – from the SNP hierarchy that their opponents should stop being horrible to them.
It actually takes the breath away that the likes of Nicola Sturgeon and now her successor’s successor as First Minister, John Swinney, believe that not only has politics become too toxic a game, but that the SNP is the innocent party.
And if you were to reckon that they’re only saying this now because they believe the numerous opinion poll verdicts that they’re en route to a drubbing at the polls, you’ll get no argument from this quarter.
With hardly a let-up in the 17 years since they first won a majority, they’ve gone from being supplicants for the voters’ support to adopting an attitude that suggested that they were Scotland’s natural party of government.
And with that confidence came an arrogance that brooked no argument.
Opposition politicians were derided, not on policy grounds, but through personal attacks and slowly but surely the well of political discourse in Scotland became ever more poisoned.
The issue hit a new low during the 2014 independence referendum when debates, which Nat activists hailed as exhilarating, became nasty and threatening as far as those opposed to independence were concerned.
And this atmosphere quickly became normal currency in Scottish politics and in some areas it was certainly what we came to expect from Sturgeon.
After Humza Yousaf’s fairly disastrous year as first minister, we now have Swinney seeking to make everything sweetness and light between the parties once more.
To do so, he’d have to rewrite the past decade-and-a-half and his full-hearted support for Sturgeon’s role therein.
For instance, she made no bones about saying that she “detested” Tories.
But it was on the issue of gender reform that she was even more scathing about her opponents.
In one outspoken tirade, she accused them of cloaking themselves in women’s rights but added: “They’re transphobic … and you’ll also find that they’re deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well.”
However, the former first minister did confess – well, sort of – that she was part of the problem in Scotland’s toxic politics, a confession that will find many in agreement with her.
And she singled out the gender issue in particular where she believed that if she took herself out of the debate, discussion of the subject could become a bit better.
Of that hope she accepts that she was wrong.
But she did say that her belief in her culpability was one of the reasons why she resigned as party leader and first minister last year.
Really? I would have thought that there are many voters who might suggest that there are other reasons for her departure.
Such as the general chaos in her party, perhaps, and the fact that the police were investigating the disappearance of over £600,000 from the SNP’s coffers.
Nevertheless, there is little doubt that she did put the trans issue front and centre in public debate and not necessarily in a good way.
Anyone who doubts that need only consider the case now ending in Edinburgh where a woman was harassed out of her job at the local rape crisis centre because she believed that biological sex is for ever.
An employment tribunal has ruled that Roz Adams’ views had been described as “inherently hateful” by her employers and said she had been subjected to what was described as a “heresy hunt”.
And according to the tribunal, playing a leading role in the campaign against her was the chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, Mridhul Wadhwa, a trans woman, who had selected those employees to deal with the various stages of the disciplinary process involving Ms Adams
Sturgeon wasn’t responsible for Roz Adams’ treatment but in view of some of her previous comments, did she not contribute to helping create the atmosphere in which it occurred?
