The Holyrood election has been dogged by controversy and candidate calamities - but does it matter?

The question is - does it matter? Will any of it affect voters’ views of the parties, or is the electorate so cynical that it just shrugs and votes the way it always intended to anyway? It’s a rather dispiriting thought.

It is also likely dispiriting to the opposition parties that the polls show voters are still likely to put the SNP back into power after May 7 - despite public trust in the Scottish Government being at a historic low at 47 per cent and polling showing 58 per cent of Scots disapprove of the SNP’s record in government.

Which is why party leaders all hope some of the stones they’re throwing from their own glasshouses finally break through somewhere, with someone.

The SNP was finally forced to act after a week or so of prevarication when it came to regional list candidate Councillor Tracy Carragher. She was just one of a number of North Lanarkshire SNP councillors who publicly supported the now convicted sex offender Jordan Linden - at one time a rising star of the party.

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Despite complaints made to the SNP by other of its councillors - who all ultimately quit the party due to its lack of action - it was only this week that John Swinney capitulated to the pressure to remove her as a candidate.

He cited new evidence - the problem is that none of it was actually new. It had all been reported rigorously by Scottish journalist Hannah Rodger since 2022.

It’s hard to understand why it took so long - especially when the SNP has been loud in its condemnation of how Scottish Labour and Anas Sarwar handled the issue of its MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy, who had retained a close friendship with another convicted sex offender, Sean Morton.

Duncan-Glancy was sacked from Sarwar’s frontbench in Holyrood a number of months ago and told she could not stand as a candidate. Yet it took the party some time to suspend the whip entirely - again, new evidence was revealed which they said showed she had not told them the whole truth about the situation.

In the midst of all of this, very little thought has been given to the victims of Linden, or even Morton. Political punches seemingly more important.

The SNP also lost its original candidate for north east Fife, Councillor Stefan Hoggan. He stood down and resigned the party whip before it became public the police were investigating him for sexual offences - which he denies.

And Sally Donaldson, the party’s first pick for the Edinburgh Southern seat, stood aside after it was revealed she was being investigated for benefit fraud.

Meanwhile Labour lost its Glasgow Southside candidate, Mohammed Ameen. He apparently failed to tell the party he was facing a fraud charge. Sources say he told the party his mum was sick when he had to leave a party campaign event - instead he was in Ayr court.

Labour is also trying to put as much distance as it can between itself and MP Joani Reid. She may not be involved in this campaign - and suspended herself from Labour after her husband was arrested for allegedly spying for China - but the reports of her behaviour with submariners at Faslane, have seen Sarwar under pressure to answer questions about her.

So far, the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Liberal Democrats have not faced any candidate issues - but the Scottish Greens have had their own issue.

The man selected to top the list of its north east regional candidates, Guy Ingerson, found himself facing internal party complaints. Such was the length of time taken to investigate, it was too late for him to remain as a candidate. His place has been taken by sitting MSP Maggie Chapman - who it turns out was involved in the complaints about Ingerson. And it seems she has been able to remain as a candidate despite complaints made against her - including by Ingerson. What a tangled web indeed.

And then of course there’s the Reform party. Its leader Malcolm Offord has found himself at the centre of a storm around a homophobic joke he told at a rugby club dinner back in 2018. It resurfaced in the last week and he admitted he said it, that he had apologised at the time and donated money to an LGBT organisation. It has not ended there of course - in many minds it raises questions about his fitness to become an MSP, though not in the minds of Reform supporters.

Perhaps those flirting with the idea of backing his party might be put off - though there’s been no polling since to see if it’s had any effect.

His party has also lost eight candidates - some who it seems didn’t want to be candidates at all, others who felt they weren’t getting enough support when their own unsavoury social media posts came to light - as well as its press officer.

Offord shrugs off the criticism - it’s all part of his party’s “we’re normal people, speaking with normal language, and not professional politicians” schtick.

There have been no polls since all of these candidate issues have emerged, so we don’t yet know if any of it will have cut through with the electorate, or if they will just put it all into the “they’re all the same” apathy basket. That would be most dangerous for Reform, who claim to be the opposite of that.

We still have just over four weeks to go til polling day as this low energy election is yet to offer something really positive for voters. Perhaps when all the party manifestos are published the electorate will find something to vote for, rather than against, or indeed choosing not to vote at all.