The Big Lie that has been imposed upon the Scottish public, with a measure of success that does little credit to the professionalism of the largely uncritical Scottish media, is that Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP government have dealt effectively with the Covid crisis, and certainly much better than the bungling Tory amateurs south of the Border.
That blatant untruth has now exploded in the First Minister’s face, as Scottish vaccination figures come into the public domain. So far from being a success, the Scottish vaccination rate is a dismal – and worsening – failure. By the end of last week only 515,000 Scots had received their first injection, with just 68 per cent of over-80s protected. The process would be ramped up, the public was assured. The result: yesterday (Sunday) the lowest number of Scottish vaccinations was recorded since the programme began.
Scotland now lags behind England (more than 8 million first doses administered to date and over 460,000 second doses), Wales and Northern Ireland. At this rate, Scotland will soon align seamlessly with the failing EU that Sturgeon aspires to rejoin.
So much for the pledge by SNP health secretary Jeane Freeman that one million people would be vaccinated by the end of January. And with one-third of over-80s still unprotected, how does Nicola Sturgeon intend to fulfil her next promise, to vaccinate all the over-70s and clinically vulnerable by mid-February? That sounds like a hectic two weeks approaching.
It is all nonsense and it cannot be long now before the Sturgeon bubble bursts. You can feed people any amount of spin and creative accounting about separatism; but when it comes to a deadly pandemic, people notice when they and their families are left unprotected, when the ambulance doors close on granny. The SNP propaganda is a La La Land scenario of happy Scots, safe under the maternal wing of Nicola, lopsided in their gait due to an arm stuffed full of anti-Covid prophylaxis. The reality is starkly different and that reality can no longer be concealed from the public.
Ruth Davidson has suggested the sacking today of Joanna Cherry from the post of front-bench spokeswoman on justice was timed to divert media attention away from the appalling vaccination figures. That is a credible scenario, but as a leading supporter of Alex Salmond, Joanna Cherry was unlikely to prosper under Sturgeon. Now she is free to denounce the First Minister’s multiple incapabilities.
Nicola Sturgeon is living in a dream world, obsessed with rivalling her enemy Alex Salmond by holding her own independence referendum. At the height of a deadly pandemic, she is focused on somehow imposing a referendum, even an illegal one, on the electorate before the end of this year. Would any neutral observer regard that as a wholly rational ambition? Last week, as the vaccination programme stumbled erratically, Sturgeon indulged in a long rant against “transphobia”, an issue to which the Covid-stricken Scottish public is passionately indifferent.
Her government is processing new “hate” laws that aspire to criminalise Scots for expressing non-PC opinions in what was formerly the privacy of their own homes. What was that famous last word William Wallace shouted from the scaffold? The SNP is riven down the middle by a Montague and Capulet feud between Salmond and Sturgeon supporters. The situation is further aggravated by a “woke” faction having won control of the party’s national executive and imposing extreme policies on a party that does not seem to have learned from the fiasco of the “Named Person” initiative to marginalise parents from control of their children.
All of that is electorally toxic, but the SNP has contrived to get away with it by pretending to “deliver” in other areas. For years, the catastrophic slide of Scottish pupils down the OECD’s PISA rankings escaped adequate attention, as did healthcare failures. But a pandemic is a game-changer. Incompetence in protecting the lives of Scots will not be overlooked or forgiven.
Add to that the extremely damaging revelations simmering to the boil in the Salmond inquiry and things look precarious for Nicola Sturgeon. Her public appearances recently have shown her to be noticeably frayed at the edges. Denouncing Boris Johnson for visiting a part of the United Kingdom during a pandemic (what would she have said if he had not come?) is not serious politics.
So, the Prime Minister made a journey that ordinary Scots (and other Brits) could not legally undertake? Nicola Sturgeon makes a journey every day that would similarly be illegal for the ordinary lieges, from her home in Glasgow to Edinburgh, for precisely the same reason: the need to conduct government business. Yet, earlier, she criticised the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, arguably the most popular members of the royal family, for coming to Scotland to thank healthcare workers. Who does Nicola Sturgeon think she is? Clearly, the absolute ruler of an already sovereign Scotland, is the answer.
Soon, however, her delusions may come home to roost and she may not even be the struggling leader of an incompetent devolved administration. With the vaccination fiasco, the propagandist claim that the First Minister is handling the pandemic “brilliantly” is crumbling. In fact, what she is doing is appearing on television regularly to deliver a script prepared by civil servants, before returning to her real preoccupations: imposing a second independence referendum on Scots, saving her career from the grave threat of the Salmond inquiry and engaging in the factional infighting that is tearing her party apart.
The end of the Sturgeon era is probably within sight. For confirmation, follow the money – in this case the bookies’ odds. On Sunday, Ladbrokes cut the odds on Sturgeon failing to serve out the whole of 2021 as first minister from 9/4 to 2/1. Just another straw in the wind, but if the gale gets any stronger, Sturgeon will find herself engulfed in an entire haystack.