Words matter so why do our politicians think so little about how they use them?

We live in cruel and unforgiving times. When news broke recently that a group of wealthy men were missing in the Atlantic Ocean, Twitter thrummed with an unsavoury schadenfreude.

There are serious points to be made about this ultimately tragic story, not least about the media coverage which was ridiculously over the top, but in the eyes of many on social media those men were not just submarine but subhuman, undeserving of empathy because of their wealth.

It’s been clear for some time that social media is making us nastier, the algorithms elevating extreme voices while relegating reasonableness to the sidelines. Worryingly, the contagion seems to have jumped from the virtual sphere into the political. 

At a recent First Minister’s Questions, Tory leader Douglas Ross wheeled out the old Twitter trope about Humza Yousaf being “useless”. Despite an intervention from the presiding officer, who appears to be fighting a losing battle over decency and respect, Ross ploughed on: “I think it’s perfectly respectful. Anyone viewing the three [previous] attempted answers by the first minister will reach the same conclusion as I did.”

At the end of a particular feisty week in which the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems had attempted to oust Lorna Slater with a vote of no confidence, the Greens were at it too, calling the Tories “extremists” and “climate change deniers”. 

But it was the first minister’s rhetoric which was the most depressing of all. Responding to a question from Labour leader Anas Sarwar about his party’s plans for a national energy company headquartered in Scotland, Yousaf started by saying Scotland’s has the majority of the UK’s renewables (not true) and finished with a flourish, telling the chamber that he would not thank “our London masters for the crumbs off the table” as Sarwar is apparently doing.  

If Yousaf is looking for the words to beguile the undecideds and rally them to the nationalist cause, then these are not them. His hackneyed allusions to Scotland’s subjugation at the hands of a colonial power simply dog whistle to a particular subsection of Twitter bore.

Quotable soundbites have always been part of our political discourse, think Harold Macmillan’s “events, dear boy, events” or Tony Blair’s “hand of history” at the conclusion of the Good Friday negotiations in Northern Ireland. Increasingly, however, our politicians speak with one eye on social media where only the most incendiary and divisive content cuts through.

This stuff matters because it sets the tone for our political debate. We only have to look back at the 2016 vote to leave the EU to see where populist sloganeering and the demonising of an ‘other’ can lead.

Sadly, there was evidence of this othering at the SNP’s special conference on independence in Dundee where one delegate, an English-born councillor, spoke of “that place” (England) and at the All Under One Banner march in Stirling where those taking part spoke of Scotland’s “suppression” at the hands of a cruel colonial master (England again). 

If we are to have the serious national conversation that the SNP wants on Scotland’s future, then politicians on all sides could start by watching their language.