Ross Greer is, comfortably, the most ridiculous man in Scottish politics.

The Scottish Greens’ co-leader is the perfect manifestation of that great comic archetype, the clueless middle-class revolutionary.

Mr Greer is an exhausting man who rages about struggle despite having been born within the sound of lawn sprinklers: he’s Wolfie 'power to the people' Smith; he’s Rick from The Young Ones, declaiming 'Neil! Neil! Orange Peel!'; he’s every member of all those Judean fronts in one.

The sight of Mr Greer repeating the oath of allegiance on his first day as an MSP for the West Scotland region a decade ago lives, vividly, in the memory.

Then just 21, the young politician raised his clenched fist as he spoke, as if he were a civil-rights warrior and not a university drop-out raised on the mean streets of Bearsden.

Photographs of Mr Greer’s swearing-in provoked much derision, including the observation from one individual that although they did not know what Public Enemy’s thunderous hip-hop anthem 'Fight the Power' sounded like when played on a kazoo, they now knew what it looked like.

Scottish politics has a sense of humour, if nothing else, and so, over the past decade, Mr Greer has become an increasingly influential figure. 

Before the Scottish Greens signed the 'Bute House Agreement', joining the SNP in government between 2021-24, he played a significant role, behind the scenes, negotiating his party’s support for then Finance Secretary John Swinney’s annual budget.

We can only speculate about what went on during those closed-door talks and there is no evidence, whatsoever, that Mr Greer was anything but tough with the man he is reported to have described as his 'work dad'. 

With his wild-eyed certainty and strangely unsettling presence - to see him in the flesh is to get the feeling that an attic somewhere isn’t being haunted by the child locked there in 1893 - Mr Greer is almost Holyrood’s political 'Prince of Darkness'; he’s Peter Mandelson rendered in papier-mâché. 

Since Ross Greer and the lachrymose Gillian Mackay succeeded Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater at the top of the Scottish Greens, last September, business has been brisk. 

Carried along by the wave started by the leader of the Greens in England and Wales, Zack Polanski, the party returned a record 15 MSPs at last month’s Holyrood election.

Ross Greer finds himself, right now, in what any Nat 5-radical should recognise as a career-defining moment. 

Since the estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty more than two weeks ago to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP while he was the party’s chief executive, John Swinney has been fighting to disentangle himself from a scandal that, every day, continues to inflict damage on both the SNP and the independence cause to which he has devoted all bar the first decade or so of his life.

Honest John wishes voters to accept the matter of the then husband of the former First Minister embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds of donations solicited by his wife is now closed. 

Mr Swinney would also, if everyone wouldn’t mind awfully, like us all to agree there’s no problem whatsoever with the SNP spending more than £600,000 which donors had been expressly promised would be ring-fenced and used only when a second referendum campaign began. 

The First Minister’s continued dismissal of calls for an inquiry - parliamentary or otherwise - is unsustainable.

Of course, those SNP members and others whose money was pilfered by Mr Murrell have every right to feel especially aggrieved but it is in the interests of every Scottish voter for a full inquiry to take place.

Since the SNP’s first Holyrood election victory in 2007, Mr Swinney has been a leading member of a political party that not only promises to govern with integrity, but which asks Scots to believe it can be trusted to establish a new, independent nation.

If the First Minister is scared of some difficult questions, now, is he really father-of-the-nation calibre? 

There can only be two possible reasons for Mr Swinney’s continued refusal even to countenance the idea of an inquiry into how things were able to go so catastrophically wrong inside the party of government: either the First Minister fears what such an investigation might find or he knows precisely what awaits discovery. Neither of these motivations for secrecy looks good. 

If it is the case that John Swinney knows even a scintilla more than he has so far admitted about the murky scandal of how Peter Murrell was allowed to get away with his crimes for years while those who raised concerns were shut down, he will never shake the shame.

If, on the other hand, the First Minister is truly in the dark about the damage Murrell caused, his rejection of an inquiry makes him look both shady and weak. 

A strong leader - the leader the SNP needs, right now - would welcome an inquiry. Not only that, he - or she, or they - would mean it. 

Little more than a month after leading his party to a remarkable fifth Holyrood election victory, John Swinney’s reputation as, if nothing else, a man of integrity is crumbling.

He’s not a new breed of politician, he’s just the same as the rest, putting himself and his party before the country. 

While the First Minister’s motivations for opposing an inquiry are perfectly easy to divine, it is not at all clear why Ross Greer has decided the Scottish Greens should act as human shields for the First Minister.

Mr Greer’s party trades on the perception that it represents a fresh, new - more honest - force in politics.

The Greens’ pitch is simple: if you feel let down, betrayed, or left behind by the mainstream parties, join us.

This is the sort of thing the SNP once said. But, instead of seizing on the First Minister’s hypocrisy, and joining calls for an entirely necessary inquiry, Mr Greer has rushed to Mr Swinney’s aid.

There is no need for a probe insists the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, who told broadcaster LBC Labour was playing politics with the matter.

The Murrell scandal represents a political open goal for Mr Greer whose mission, surely, is to build support for his party.

His failure to exploit the SNP’s misery is just bad politics.

Last week, an old social media post of Mr Greer’s re-emerged to embarrass him.

In it, he wrote about how, when he was a young member of Yes Scotland, Peter Murrell had intervened on his behalf to secure him a pay-rise.

The Green MSP has since deleted that post, perhaps because it threw up difficult questions about the nature of the relationship between the SNP and Yes Scotland, perhaps because it embarrassed his “work Dad”. 

The Scottish Green Party isn’t a bright new political force, it’s the SNP’s “free-from” range.

And, no matter how hard he clenches that wee fist, Ross Greer’s just another establishment politician looking out for his dodgy mates.