Sturgeon's pandemic narrative could be completely destroyed as the Covid Inquiry heads north of the border
Source - Daily Telegraph 16/01/24
The UK Covid inquiry is heading for Edinburgh, where it will hear evidence on what happened north of the border during the pandemic, and who was to blame.
You read that right: poor decision-making and party politics played just as much a part of the pandemic narrative in Scotland as anywhere else in the country, despite the prevailing myth that, under Nicola Sturgeon’s wise and courageous leadership, Scots fared much better than England did under that rogue, Boris Johnson.
Sturgeon talked a good game. That, in fact, sums up her leadership. Her reputation – particularly among the Left-leaning, progressive elites of London’s media bubble – was based on the former first minister’s ability to communicate effectively with almost any audience, despite the fact that observers rather more familiar with her modus operandi could spot the faux affability from a mile off.
During the pandemic, the particular game to be played was one-upmanship with Johnson. Sticking carefully to the SNP game plan that portrayed Scotland, always, as better than and different from England, Sturgeon chose to kill two birds with one stone. She established her “caring but serious” demeanour, and used her daily televised briefings to promote her own profile.
Despite the national crisis, some critics recognised this ploy for what it was and urged the BBC to stop giving the first minister the priceless free daily coverage that her media advisers had counted on. The state broadcaster, in a rare moment of courage, announced they would stop broadcasting the briefings live. Then, following the inevitable outpouring of rage from activists and MSPs, it capitulated and reverted to their previous role as the main platform for The Nicola Show.
Insofar as Sturgeon had a Covid strategy, it was to replicate Johnson’s decisions but with a tartan trim. It often involved announcing, or calling for, certain restrictions before the UK government was able to, so that the impression was that the tail was wagging the dog. It’s a trick that could not be replicated when it came to furlough payments or to Johnson’s decision to fast-track the Covid vaccine. But that didn’t prevent the first minister and her party from extolling the virtues of the subsequent roll-out in Scotland in the the hope, presumably, that the existence of the vaccines themselves would somehow be credited to Holyrood rather than Westminster.
Nor was Sturgeon’s much-lauded “openness” – again, carefully phrased in order to draw a glowing comparison with events down south – able to withstand even a modicum of scrutiny. The WhatsApp messages shared by Scottish ministers during the pandemic and now submitted to the inquiry took an age to materialise. At first, Sturgeon refused to confirm whether she had kept any of the messages, and then there were reports that she had deleted them. But then it emerged that the former finance secretary, Kate Forbes MSP, had held on to all of hers and would submit them to the inquiry. Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s successor, later announced he would submit his own cache of material.
If Scotland really is different from England, maybe “transparency” means something different here too.
We must now await the eventual conclusions of the inquiry (assuming any of us live that long). All we know today is that despite the much-trumpeted differences in approach to the pandemic by the caring, sympathetic, head-tilting first minister to that taken by our partying, uncaring prime minister, Covid fatalities were pretty much the same in Scotland as anywhere else. So, why did Scots have to suffer longer and harsher lockdowns? Why were Scottish school pupils kept out of their schools for longer? What good did it do for Scotland’s hospitality industry to suffer more losses and business than their English counterparts?
If the answer is no more substantive than “Because Scotland is different”, then devolution has indeed failed.
When the remit of the Scottish Parliament was drawn up in 1998, devolution’s founders had no notion that pandemics would be on the political agenda two decades later. So the default position of a “four nations” approach was taken to Covid. Perhaps the formal inquiry will conclude that this approach saved lives, somewhere, somehow. If not, then the usual, default excuse for such an approach – namely that the alternative would “undermine devolution” – isn’t enough.
A national emergency like a lethal pandemic should have been handled, not on a “four nations” basis, but on a “one nation” basis. Life and death scenarios are too important to revert to the usual complaints of the constitutional and devolution purists even if – God forbid – vital decisions during that emergency are then taken by politicians you didn’t actually vote for.
Such an emergency should certainly not be used by any local politician to grandstand and self-promote in order to deflect from a woeful record of ministerial achievement. Naming no names, of course: let’s leave that to the inquiry.
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