The National:

THE election race started, as it often does, with a LibDems photoshoot. There, Wee Willie Rennie on his giant deckchair saying something about tides turning.

Cue jokes about minnows.

But how very much smaller Rennie seems since Friday, when Alex Salmond’s Alba Party launch splashed onto our timelines. Rennie’s had nary a look-in since, the LibDems’ brand new campaign already diminished as all talk turns to Sturgeon, Salmond, SNP.

Who’s switching? Who’s staying? Who’s saying what about who?

With a cast of just four candidates on Friday, Alba’s party started off feeling much bigger than that of Scottish Labour, which had released drone footage showing an empty Glasgow city centre. Was it a metaphor for its likely vote share, The Jouker wondered?

Lorna Slater of the Scottish Greens, herself an aerial performer, appeared on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday calling the noise around the Salmond harassment inquiry a “circus”. That’s finished, but there’s certainly only one show in town at the minute. Sadly for the Greens, it proved a spectacle bigger than their AGM and conference.

And there are more SNP people buying tickets by the day, it seems – MPs Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey have front row seats for Alba in Westminster, while councillors Lynne Anderson and Caroline McAllister have now joined them.

Meanwhile, other SNP politicians have been at pains to state their allegiance, all yellow jackets and “both votes SNP” declarations. So far, so normal in terms of election campaigns – but this is far from a normal election campaign.

At what other time in our renewed parliament’s 20-year history has the contest been between the SNP and the SNP’s kamikaze wing? Let no mistake be made, it is do or die for the politicians who have switched. If the voters don’t take to Alba, their political futures are far more uncertain than they would be for unsuccessful candidates within the SNP’s massive machine.

This is political drama par excellence with characters we already know and love/hate/ignore [delete as appropriate] and the tensions couldn’t be higher. The future of the country, it cannot be stated enough, is at stake. What happens in Holyrood over the next five years doesn’t just stay in Holyrood, it filters out to every home, school and business across this land and its influence extends all the way to Westminster – where the most ardent viewers of this season of Scottish Politics will be based.

Oh yes, they’re behind you.

Over the 12 months of enforced daytime pyjama-wearing, it’s felt at times like we’ve had nothing to talk about. “What’s been going on?” we’ve asked each other on yet another Zoom call. “Nothing,” we’ve heard in response. Now you can’t get anyone to wheesht.