Question Time from Aberdeen had the vague air of a war crimes tribunal. 

Up on the dais were arraigned the rotten old despots, pleading and squirming before the victims of their abuses of power. In this case, the workers and families of the North East who have lost careers and livelihoods to the tyranny of Net Zero.

Before them sat the leaders of parties almost all of which had a hand in the Net Zero folly, even if some have turned tail and offered mea culpas in the face of the economic and human costs.

Dotted throughout the audience were folk who knew these costs only too well. One after another, they vented their fear and frustration, one woman for her husband’s job, a man with the disingenuous patter of politicians when his community was losing jobs every day.

This was meant to be a leaders debate ahead of May 7’s Holyrood elections but John Swinney didn’t bother showing up. In his place, he sent his housing minister, Mairi McAllan, a protege of Nicola Sturgeon who seems to have been at the back of the queue the day they were handing out personalities.

McAllan is a case study in the limitations of media training. 

She does the ‘I’m listening’ head-tilt, the ‘I understand’ tightening of the lips and the ‘trust me’ lean-forward, but there is not the faintest hint of authenticity. 

She’s as sincere as a corporate email. She had her talking points – we needed ‘energy security’ and ‘climate compatibility’ – and she stuck to them relentlessly, even after presenter Fiona Bruce reminded her that she’d said the opposite last year.

McAllan sounded miffed. ‘I’m just quoting you back to yourself,’ Bruce pointed out, pressing the minister to take a clear position for or against new drilling to cut energy bills.

‘It must be led by evidence,’ McAllan repeated.

‘You must have seen the evidence,’ Bruce reasoned.

‘I have not.’

‘So you’ve no idea.’ By this point there was an edge of impatience to Bruce’s tone.

McAllan protested but the BBC woman begged her to express some sort of opinion. All she got in response was another circuit around the ‘energy security’ and ‘climate compatibility’ verbal roundabout.

The reception in the studio was chilly. If they burned every hydrocarbon in the North Sea, this audience still wouldn’t warm to McAllan.

Reform’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord did a little better with a reiteration of his proposal for domestic production licences, meaning any oil or gas taken out of the UK’s sea bed would remain within the UK. There was some applause for this.

Even so, Offord’s lament for the self-harm of shutting down offshore energy development was undercut by Anas Sarwar’s jab that his service as a minister in the last government would have been a good time to take this stance.

Green co-leader Gillian Mackay told the Aberdonians that ‘more drilling is not compatible with the climate or energy security’, and tin-eared though her position is, it takes some moxy to argue against oil and gas jobs, in Aberdeen, two weeks before an election. Everything Mackay believes in is wrong but at least she believes in something.

But the strongest performers in the debate were the audience members, who knew their stuff but also had the painful experience to go with it.

One man, who seemed to be an erstwhile SNP supporter, told McAllan: ‘You’ve not fought our corner. You’ve been wishy-washy. There’s more than climate change. There’s jobs, there’s livelihoods.’ I didn’t catch his name but it’s a pity he’s not on the ballot paper on May 7.

The nadir came when Russell Findlay complained that Swinney ought to be there, answering for his policies to the voters of the North East, instead of sending one of his flunkies.

‘Why do you have such a problem with women being represented in politics?’ McAllan snipped. Did I mention she was Sturgeon’s protege?

When she introduced her, Bruce noted that McAllan ‘has been tipped as a future leader of the SNP’. She has my endorsement.