SIX days ago, Douglas Ross made headlines with his claim that Nicola Sturgeon would step down as SNP leader before the next Holyrood election.
Days later, headlines were made again after news broke that the two party leaders had laid down a cash bet on who would last longest in their position.
Clearly wanting a piece of the action, Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton is today making headlines for saying the exact same thing.
Speaking to journalists as the Scottish LibDem conference got under way (yes, they’re actually having one, despite their four MPs and four MSPs being able to comfortably fit around a dining table), Cole-Hamilton said: “It is hard to see how she leads the SNP into the next election.
“I say that because she has an internecine civil war within her party which might be dormant just now but I think is about to flare up again on a number of issues.
“She has a fundamentalist and a gradualist wing of her party that will come to blows then they realise there isn’t going to be an independence referendum in 2023.
“Then there will be pressure for her maybe to go for a wildcat referendum and all these things.”
However, Cole-Hamilton said he won’t be “placing any bets like Douglas Ross” - which could either be because he is not confident of winning or because no-one wants to talk to him.
Either way, he went on: “[Sturgeon] has looked knackered for a long time, she has looked exhausted. I can understand that – she has put in a lot of hours of work in terms of the pandemic, I wouldn’t take that away from her.
“You’ve got to think that part of her wouldn’t much rather have a nice academic job in America or something, rather than lead that viper’s nest of a party that she does.”
He added: “I think there are many staging posts on the road where things can change here, and I think my party needs to be ready for success.”
"Ready for success" is likely all the LibDems are ever going to be.
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