THE spat between David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs this week showed Westminster politics at its playground worst (which is not, of course, to say that Holyrood always transcends such nonsense) as the question of the Opposition leader’s suit got more attention than the destruction of the NHS.

It doesn’t say much for the Prime Minister’s mum if she would have been more concerned, as he claimed, about Corbyn’s tie being straight than about the country’s health service. Corbyn was right to retort that it was his mother’s generation that had built the NHS. But it did leave me reflecting a little on the role of the unspoken dress code in political life.

Perhaps it’s because a few of my own party colleagues, hopeful of their prospects of becoming MSPs in a few months’ time, have been marched off to the shops by friends for a bit of a wardrobe reset. Or perhaps I’m just aware that I’ve changed my own style over the years.

One of my favourite moments on Twitter was reading a comment from someone I didn’t know, saying they had seen me cycling down Holyrood Road in a three-piece suit looking “like some kinda Scandinavian Prime Minister”. Yes, that was pretty much the look I was going for. In fact, I still quite enjoy the reactions in the street when folk see a little bald man in a suit pedalling along, instead of the lycra-clad figure they might expect.

But what a far cry from the younger, fresher me described in the papers after election night in 2003 as looking as though I had just dashed home to borrow a friend’s suit. It was fair comment, too.

To be clear, the suit was my own but it didn’t really fit and could reasonably be described as being at the Corbyn end of the spectrum. More or less the colour and texture of porridge, I had bought it a couple of months earlier to wear for hustings and the like. It only confirmed my dislike for suits, and, once elected, I took to dressing down. I didn’t exactly turn up to the debating chamber in jeans and a T-shirt, but I was almost self-consciously trying not to look like a “suit”.

Which should be fine. In fact, I can’t see any real reason why jeans and a T-shirt should be frowned on either. Parliament is supposed to represent the public, and surely it should be able to look like the public too? But sadly it just doesn’t work. It didn’t take long back in 2003 before I was forced to accept that if I was going to be taken seriously I would just have to wear the damn costume. And as soon as I was equipped with a couple of slightly better-fitting dark suits, it was remarkable how it changed the way I was treated.

Actually, there are some advantages, not least from a Green perspective. Make a speech about climate change, the arms industry, consumerism or the futility of growth while looking like an activist fresh from a sit-in, and many people will decide they disagree before you even open your mouth. Make the same speech disguised as a “proper” politician and more people will listen for longer.

I have no idea whether this quote is accurately attributed to Alex Salmond’s grandfather, but the advice that “if you’re going to say something radical, make sure you wear a suit” has a lot of value.

I’m very aware that the shallow standards of image are more unfairly and more relentlessly applied to women in political life, who often find that it’s impossible to stop people focusing on their appearance rather than their words and actions. I should, perhaps, be grateful that the solution available to me is as simple as wearing an identical suit every day.

But even in 2016, when a Prime Minister can throw a silly jibe across the chamber and then appear at his own campaign rally the same day in his shirtsleeves, sadly it’s still impossible for politicians just to look like themselves. It never comes across that way, as the man who emailed me a while back after a TV debate the night before made clear. Outraged at my appearance, he told me that he was putting a disposable razor and an M&S voucher in the post and insisted that the next time I graced his screen I must be clean-shaven and wearing a tie.

Whoever finds themselves newly elected to Holyrood in May, they will no doubt find themselves judged by standards which make little sense. But I hope they will keep pushing the boundaries of what’s accepted until we’re a parliament that would have pleased the late Mrs Corbyn far more than the PM’s mum.