Michael Matheson is lucky to be in Holyrood’s Last Chance Saloon

Word has been seeping out from semi-official channels that Michael Matheson, the hapless SNP health minister, is only one controversy away from the sack in the continuing saga of iPad-gate.

His allies, such as they are, may take some comfort from this fact but there is surely another way of looking at his situation and it goes like this: for goodness sake – why does this man deserve so many chances?

On the day that an opinion poll suggested more than 60 per cent of those asked believed that Mr Matheson should resign or “be resigned”, and that includes a majority of SNP voters, the minister showed no sign of going quietly.

Indeed, the opposite was the case in that he delivered what appears to have been a bullish performance at a press conference that was supposed to be about how the SNP Government expected the NHS to cope with winter’s pressures. But instead it boiled down to: would he stay or would he go?

As far as he’s concerned, he’s staying and insisted that he was following First Minister Humza Yousaf’s orders “to drive forward the NHS to support its recovery”.

However, in such cases – and especially when we’re led to believe that Mr Matheson has been given a sort of stay of execution – we should recall the circumstances that got him to his current predicament.

First up, we were told by the minister that the £11,000 bill that he ran up in data charges while on holiday in Morocco last Christmas was all concerned with the work for his Falkirk West constituents he was required to do, even if he was on holiday with his family during a Holyrood recess. And that’s what he told the parliamentary authorities who would have had to foot the bill via the taxpayers’ bottomless pit.

But because of a mix-up over sim cards, the minister agreed to pay £3000 of that “roaming” total, while still insisting that the bill was not due to personal use by him or his family.

It was this “no personal use” statement that he stuck to in his initial dealings with the First Minister, who has resolutely defended his minister as an honest man of integrity, and with the media who had by this stage smelled a rat.

And lo and behold, it duly appeared in the shape of his admission that, after all, and in spite of everything else he’d said, the massive roaming charges had been run up by his sons watching Scottish football matches all the way from their Moroccan holiday hotel.

But, no, their father – a keen football fan – knew nothing of this, nor was there, apparently, ever any interest in what his sons had been doing when they were, presumably, out of sight of their parents.

Journalists repeatedly asked him whether anyone else had used his equipment and/or contributed to the data bill or if there had been any personal use of the device, to which he’d also said no.

But through it all, his boss stuck with him even though he, too, had been the recipient of not quite the full explanation. And even for keeping quiet, for far too long, about his sons’ role in running up the roaming charges, Mr Yousaf was wont to forgive his minister.

That was a case of protecting his family, said the First Minister, who made it sound like some noble act – ignoring the fact that, at first, Mr Matheson had been more than content to allow the taxpayer to stump up the cash.

Labour’s Dame Jackie Baillie said that while people might understand his wish to protect his family they would not forgive the cover-up.

Consequently, with those devastating poll figures, which show that even SNP supporters have had enough, Humza Yousaf has ample reason to say “time’s up” for Michael Matheson in Holyrood’s Last Chance Saloon.