She insists an independent Scotland would have joined the UK's vaccine efforts, despite being part of the EU. If only that were true.
Source - Daily Telegraph 21/04/21
Not that it is likely to make much of a difference to the result of the Scottish Parliament elections next month, but Nicola Sturgeon finds herself in a bit of a quandary.
An online hustings event organised by NUS Scotland became the talk of Twitter as videos of a very rattled first minister were gleefully shared. What brought her to the point where she seemed keen to deliver a Glasgow kiss to her Conservative opponent, Douglas Ross?
The SNP have been put on the defensive for their insistence that an independent Scotland, as a fully-fledged member of the EU, would have chosen to abandon the European Medicines Agency and the EU approval and procurement process for the Covid vaccine, and would instead have joined the UK’s rather more successful efforts.
This, of course, is untrue. We know this not just because not a single existing EU member exploited the rules to go it alone, and not just because Scotland, having just achieved EU membership, would be vanishingly unlikely to side with the rest of the UK it had just abandoned in favour of its newfound allies on the continent.
No, we know the true SNP position because they told us so. In the wake of the government’s decision to forego the services of the European Medicines Agency and pursue its own approval system for the covid vaccine, the SNP health spokesperson in the Commons, Philippa Whitford, said: “The UK is losing the European Medicines Agency – one of the great advantages was working together to have a single licensing system that licensed new drugs right across Europe.”
That seems a pretty straightforward and honest statement about the SNP’s approach to the EMA. But last night Sturgeon argued that, since it was at least legally possible for individual EU members to have pursued their own path, nothing would have stopped Scotland doing the same. And she is right, of course. But that is hardly the point. The point is, would they have chosen to?
Why is it that the first minister now refutes what her health spokesperson said? Was Whitford’s assertion that a single system to licence drugs across Europe was one of the EMA’s “great advantages” wrong? Was she reprimanded at the time for saying it? Did Sturgeon herself rush to the media to disown Whitford’s comments and to demand that she be removed from her front bench position?
Of course, had Britain’s approach to securing the vaccine proved to be the disaster that the SNP – and every other opposition party – predicted, Sturgeon would not have been put on the defensive. She could have smugly (but with more sorrow than anger, obviously) regretted the vaccine nationalism of the UK government and offered future, closer co-operation with the EU as an incentive to vote SNP in May. That’s politics and few other party leaders would have resisted the temptation to take advantage of such calamitous consequences arising from an unforced error.
Instead, with the UK’s (and therefore Scotland’s) vaccine rollout programme soaring ahead of the EU’s, the first minister doubled down and asked her audience to believe that she was always on TeamUK’s side anyway – what on earth would lead us to believe otherwise?
The SNP are not the only party to regret their opposition to Britain’s withdrawal from the EMA. But for them it’s a more serious strategic issue than the one that confronts UK parties. Sturgeon has pinned her entire political career on attracting those who voted No in 2014 and Remain in 2016 to her cause. She is beloved in parts of the London-based media because she has given the impression that she is, at heart, a fully signed-up advocate of the European project.
Unfortunately for her fanbase, this is far from the case. Her party spent more money and resources on a single parliamentary by-election in Shetland in 2019 than it did campaigning for a Remain vote in 2016. SNP campaigners for Remain were notable only by their absence, for they knew that a Leave vote across the whole UK would suit their short-term political purposes rather nicely, so long as a majority of Scots voted to remain. Just as Sturgeon only discovered her feminist credentials after she replaced Alex Salmond as first minister in 2014, so she has only found an enthusiasm for the EU since June 2016.
Her party opposed Britain’s leaving the EMA because it fitted nicely into the “evil Tories abandoning nice, progressive Europe and taking Scotland with them” narrative. And when that narrative turned out to be wholly false, when it was proved that ministers’ decision to pursue an independent vaccine approval process was the right one, Sturgeon found herself either having to defend the indefensible (the position taken by Whitford in the Commons) or deny that such had ever been her party’s policy in the first place.
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, is clearly getting under her skin with his constant attacks on her, while the new Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, seems to be having a good campaign by ostentatiously remaining above the fray and condescendingly criticising both Sturgeon and Ross for being a bad example to children – a comment that further irritated Sturgeon.
It emerged today that the first minister, usually so assured in her media performances, has opted out of appearing in person on a BBC Question Time Holyrood election special, while every other party leader will be present. This campaign is proving much tougher for her than most expected, even though she remains virtually guaranteed to still be in her job come May 7.
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