IT took mere minutes of the first FMQs session of 2023 for the party leaders to ditch their new year’s resolutions.
Those promises whispered during the dying hours of 2022: to keep questions and answers brief, to be cordial to opponents and to favour compromise over conflict were all abandoned.
There will be no "New Year, new me" round these parts.
The party leaders jumped enthusiastically back into the grimy business of politics. There were raised voices, as well as the usual heckling and bad-faith interpretations of what the other person had said.
Don’t you just love a fresh start?
The NHS winter crisis dominated the session and sparked some fiery exchanges between the party leaders.
Douglas Ross began by asking the First Minister about the decision taken by NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde to pause non-urgent operations and questioned how she can still have confidence in her Health Secretary.
"I think it insults people’s intelligence to suggest that the problems being encountered by the NHS in Scotland – which are the same as the problems being encountered elsewhere – are somehow down to the Health Secretary,’’ replied the First Minister.
She then reeled off a whole list of health boards in England that had taken similar measures to NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and asked Douglas Ross if that was also the fault of Humza Yousaf.
Douglas Ross was not impressed in the slightest.
The first FMQs of the new year and Nicola Sturgeon (below) had already committed the cardinal sin of mentioning England.
(For reference, the only context in which it is acceptable for an SNP MSP to mention England is when they are confirming that yes, they definitely will be supporting England in that big football match they have coming up.)
"How can nationalist MSPs actually CLAP such a DESPICABLE answer from SCOTLAND’S First Minister, in SCOTLAND’S parliament, about SCOTLAND’S National Health Service?’’ asked the Scottish Tory leader.
Later in the session, Douglas Ross called – once again – for the First Minister to sack the Health Secretary.
"This Health Secretary and this Government is not on top of this crisis. His failures are creating risks to lives across the country.
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"First Minister, surely, for the good of Scotland, it’s time to sack Humza Yousaf.’’
If Douglas Ross really wants the Health Secretary to be sacked then he’s going about it the wrong way. He has demanded it so often that it’s now impossible for Nicola Sturgeon to sack Humza Yousaf, even if she wanted to.
The Health Secretary could spend his working day chucking baked potatoes at GP receptionists and Nicola Sturgeon still wouldn’t be able to give Douglas Ross the satisfaction of getting rid of him.
And what if she sacks him and then Douglas Ross suddenly changes his mind? Who knows, next week he might suddenly discover a new-found respect for the Health Secretary, just as he did with Boris Johnson.
