RUSSELL Findlay stepped up to the plate for his First Minister’s Questions debut as leader of the Scottish Conservatives.

A former tabloid journalist, he knows how to put things in a way ordinary people will understand.

The clinical jargon of “delayed discharge” became people “trapped in hospitals”. The National Care Service was branded “another SNP pet project doomed to fail”.

Politicians so often waffle on in obscure technobabble, the jargon of their Holyrood (or Westminster) mandarin class. It’s effective when a politician can speak in the language of real people.

But there is a chasm between what the former hack can do on the page and his abilities on his feet in the bear pit of the Holyrood chamber.

(Image: Andrew Milligan)

Findlay (above) sounded like a man who’d had his sedatives this morning. He came across as wooden, scripted, bloodless – even a little bored at points.

He told us that the care system in Scotland was “collapsing” with the mildly disappointed but unsurprised tone of someone announcing that their bus was late.

A punchy message about the SNP, one that appeared to resonate with voters at the last election, being “disconnected” from the public found itself drowned by a lifeless delivery that sounded like he needed a shot of adrenaline.

His theme strayed from his usual wheelhouse of crime and justice. Before being the Tory’s Holyrood spokesperson on those topics, Findlay was an acclaimed crime journalist for the big Scottish tabloids.

It’s where he is most comfortable – and at his best.

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Read his book Acid Attack, an account of being targeted by a criminal gang and having acid sprayed in his face. When he’s talking about organised crime and the hardmen of Scotland’s outlaw underbelly, it is gripping stuff.

But when he strays onto the SNP’s criminal justice policy – which comes up with unwelcome frequency – he turns droning and preachy.

Maybe it’s because health and social care policy is not really the thing that gets his blood pumping that Findlay gave such an anaemic performance.

(Image: Jane Barlow/PA)

It’s fertile ground for Scottish Labour and they know it, with Anas Sarwar (above) more often than not going on the problems in the NHS during FMQs.

That’s because they know it’s a topic about which the public care. Findlay sounds like he doesn’t.  

Swinney’s USP is to come across as uncontroversial, like an earnest Kirk minister, a safe pair of hands.

But if the Scottish Tories want to keep their spot as the official opposition, or even find themselves in government come the next election, someone needs to give Russell Findlay a jump start.