In an analogue age Anas Sarwar might have got away with that - but this is a digital age, and he didn't

I forgot all about the Channel 4 leaders' debate, so I didn't watch it live, but obviously I soon heard of Offord's revelation about Anas Sarwar approaching him about a post-election deal to keep out the SNP, so I've just watched it back online.  What absolutely stunned me when I reached the crucial moment was that Krishnan Guru-Murthy, who in other ways was a reasonably good moderator, seemed completely oblivious to the significance of what had just happened.  I would have expected him to laser straight in and ask for as much clarification and detail of the Sarwar-Offord conversation as possible, and then to demand that Sarwar either confirm or deny those details.  Instead he allowed the debate to instantly move on. 

You could see John Swinney patiently biding his time for several minutes and wait for his turn to speak so he could bring the subject back up, but when Sarwar then did the Sarwar thing of dealing with a moment of maximum danger by drowning it out with a wall of noise, Guru-Murthy passively allowed him to do that and then hurriedly wrapped the segment up before Swinney had a chance to say anything more.  It was absolutely bizarre.  In other circumstances we might have put it down to a London-based presenter not understanding the nuances of Scottish political debate, but I wouldn't have thought any journalist anywhere in the UK should have any difficulty understanding why proposing a deal with Reform is taboo.  I suspect he'll be kicking himself now.

I was reminded tonight of why I was so convinced that Scottish Labour had taken leave of its senses when it first chose Anas Sarwar as its leader, in spite of him being the media's darling.  Prior to then I had always regarded him as an utterly atrocious politician, and the main reason for that was my recollection of his performance in the televised indyref debates, including in particular a head-to-head on STV with Nicola Sturgeon in which he simply refused to let her speak.  Every time she opened her mouth, he shouted over her with a stream of utter drivel about anything and everything, including even the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo.  I suppose in some ways that's quite an effective defensive tactic, because if you literally prevent the audience at home from hearing anything your opponent says, it stops any attack lines against you from hitting home.  But the problem is that you can't do that without the audience concluding you're an ill-mannered buffoon.  He was straight back to that problem tonight.  I'm sure he thought it was a wizard idea to try to prevent Swinney taking advantage of Offord's revelation by screaming "HOW DARE YOU JOHN THIS MAN WANTS TO DEPORT MY CHILDREN THIS IS A MORAL ISSUE HOW DARE YOU JOHN DON'T YOU DARE JOHN", but most viewers will just have been thinking: well, if this is a moral issue, and if Offord wants to deport people's children, why on earth did you ask him to do a deal with you?  Doesn't that, in fact, make you rather immoral and cynical and opportunistic and unprincipled?

In another age the Sarwar noise-fest and Guru-Murthy's lapse might have meant that Offord's comment would have got lost, but instead none of that mattered because the clip was soon all over social media and is now dominating the headlines.  One thing is for sure: any slim chance of Sarwar becoming First Minister by a back door route has just become even slimmer, because if any chance emerges of him getting into Bute House with the votes of Reform MSPs, his antics tonight will be played back on a loop and he'll lose all credibility.

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