The increasingly frustrated former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, found himself relegated to the third row back in the school pic outside Westminster.
So anxious was Mr Salmond to be noticed that he was jumping up and down and waving at the camera.
A revealing little moment came as the posse was assembling for the shot.
Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, not an MP, was there to stamp her personal authority on the gig as party Leader, knowing that if she did not, her predecessor would certainly bounce to the front and assert his own centrality.
With the MPs pretty well in position and anxious not to be late into clear command on the bridge deck, Ms Sturgeon, deployed a neat two-handed approach, physically manhandled out of the way a female member of the 56 on the downstage right of the front row with a very fleeting smile of pacification – and marched for glory.
Margaret Thatcher could not have done it with more ruthless resolve.
Having made it known this morning that the former leader of the 6 SNP MPs at Westminster, Moray’s Angus Robertson, is to keep his role and scale it up to leading the 56 – 50 of them rookies, Ms Sturgeon made sure to have Angus Robertspn down there, centre front, with her and her deputy party leader, the increasingly scary machine-man, Stewart Hosie.
Alex Salmond clearly needs and deserves a role to keep him busy and give him status right across the expanded group of SNP MPs – without the sort of policy position that would put him into conflict with his necessarily watchful and self-protective successor.
Make Mr Salmond Chief Whip.
As today’s third largest party at Westminster, the SNP are about to take over the historic Whips’ offices that the Liberals have had for almost a century. The grandeur and the frissons of historic change in the rooms would all appeal to Mr Salmond.
The Chief Whip has to deal with every MP and deliver the sort of votes from the group that Mr Robertson, with his ventriloquist, Ms Sturgeon, will require - so Mr Salmond would be central, not peripheral, to the entire party operation at Westminster.
And, as Chief Whip, with his own long years 0f service at Westminster, now to be augmented, Mr Salmond would bring to the job far greater knowledge and understanding of the protocols and procedures at Westminster than do any of the six recent ‘veterans’ who will now have to do the sheepdogging of the newbie masses.
And all good Chief Whips have to be bullies.
