It was not difficult to detect the frustration among opposition MSPs before First Minister’s Questions.
Nicola Sturgeon had been rightly criticised for a week over the scandal of pupils from deprived areas having their grades lowered.
It was an unparalleled injustice in the devolution era which infuriated parents and young people across the county.
But on the morning of what could have been the First Minister’s reckoning an opinion poll led to the opposition parties gasping for air.
The poll - conducted during the grades fiasco - showed the SNP soaring to 57% and heading for an outright majority next year.
It was an uncomfortable backdrop for Ruth Davidson, who had quit as Scottish Tory leader but was now back as temporary group leader until the election.
Davidson has been off the political front line for a while and her performance at FMQs was painful to watch.
She raised accountability and transparency in relation to the education debacle, only to walk into an insult about her elevation to the unelected House of Lords.
She referred to Sturgeon’s loyalty to Education Secretary John Swinney, without seeing that it would raise questions about whether she had been loyal to ex-leader Jackson Carlaw.
Flustered, and defeated, she signed off with a rant about Alex Salmond and Putin.
Richard Leonard, currently the leader of Scottish Labour, was little better, opening with a riff about Sturgeon calling on a former Labour education minister to quit 20 years ago.
It was typical Leonard, who prefers talking about Labour’s history to Scotland’s present. As ever, he failed to make an impression.
Sturgeon’s Government has failed on education and done little to reverse our drugs death crisis.
The brutal opinion poll is more an indictment of the Opposition than a vindication of the Government.
