Mike Russell, one of your smarter nats

The Herald reports, here, that the Education Secretary Michael Russell has offered councils a deal on speeding up the SNP's policy to cut class sizes. The deals is: if councils do a bit more on class sizes, they can scale back on providing free school meals.

The class-size policy is already dead in the water, so Mr Russell's proposals mean that, as well as failing to deliver on that policy, the SNP will also fail to meet their pledge on free school meals for deserving children.

Mike Russell is widely regarded as one of the cleverer SNP politicians, but a compromise that destroys two policies instead of one? You have to ask: how clever is that?