Kate Forbes’s announcement on Monday that she would be standing down as an MSP next year caught most people – her political allies, former backers, current colleagues – by surprise. She decided to make her intentions clear a few days prior to her attendance at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, where she was set to be interviewed by the Herald newspaper. But the timing of the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch MSP’s exit news also coincided, incidentally, with Storm Floris hitting the UK. ‘At about 11 a.m., just after making the news, the power went off completely,’ she confessed to Thursday’s audience.

The Wi-Fi broke, a mobile phone mast went down, and there was no 4G and no mobile connectivity at all. And despite going from my office back home to see if things were any better, I was totally cut

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