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Most of the better-known political insults were, to the best of my recollection, not called out as “unparliamentary language”. And I was there when they were uttered and largely accepted.
However, the common currency in political debate these days is growing increasingly heated with harsh new personal attacks being launched, even if the next Scottish Parliament is still six months away.
Ferocious new battle lines are being drawn up between the current Scottish parties to a large extent because Reform is charging into the fray and boasting that it will end up as Scotland’s third party, ahead of the Tories.
But it’s also because Labour has plunged into the doldrums because of its unpopular Budget alienating many of its supporters and the SNP sniffing the prospect of winning another contest.
As the language coarsens, we might remind ourselves about what is banned.
Over the years, various Commons Speakers have taken objection to words that included blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, stool-pigeon and traitor.
However, “abune them a” as Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns, might have said was “liar”. Nobody but nobody could be accused of lying to Parliament, no matter the evidence.
As a result, the best barbs were chosen carefully. Thus, Michael Foot’s famous insult about Norman Tebbit as having the mores of a “semi-housetrained polecat”, or Denis Healey’s description of being attacked by Geoffrey Howe as like being “savaged by a dead sheep” caused great Commons hilarity but no rebukes from the chair.
And the friends of David Cameron never repeated their description of his Right-wing opponents as “swivel-eyed loons” in the Commons chamber.
Speaker Hoyle allowed the word “liar” to be used by the SNP’s Ian Blackford about whether Boris Johnson had told the truth over the Downing Street events, dubbed partygate, during Covid lockdowns.
But this was wholly exceptional and I doubt if it will be repeated.
And, of course, politicians can call each other what they like away from the precincts of Westminster or Holyrood, so long as they take cognisance of the laws of slander and defamation.
All of this becomes relevant with the extra-parliamentary exchanges between Russell Findlay, the Scottish Tory leader, and Nicola Sturgeon, the former, largely unlamented first minister.
He appears to be privately quite happy to be regarded, in spite of public protestations to the contrary, as the Scottish Conservatives’ tough new kid on the block.
He’s behaving with not a shred of respect for current First Minister John Swinney, constantly berating him and his ministers for incompetence.
But now he’s switched his target to Ms Sturgeon, describing her as a “charlatan”, in a magazine interview, not the Holyrood chamber.
She had, he said, created “punitive and stupid rules” during the lockdown “and relied on political spin to hide how incompetent she really was”.
That lady’s friends appeared to take grave exception to that description and while it is not included in the official list of unparliamentary language, it is not often used as the normal coinage of political exchanges.
The former first minister’s allies said she had displayed “competence and compassion” during the pandemic.
Findlay is wise to be on his guard against Reform but not obsessively so.
Nigel Farage’s men are talking up their chances in Scotland and some local results support their words.
But, at this stage, it’s difficult to see the kind of breakthrough he’s talking about becoming a fact of Scottish political life.
Nicola Sturgeon a charlatan? Scottish politicians are getting personal
Trading witty barbs is a beloved tradition in the political chamber, but to hurl brutal insults outside of such a theatre is a shame