Scotland

If you believe in the United Kingdom, it’s hard not to revel in the bitter infighting occasioned by the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon. Senior SNP ministers are monstering one another on TV, trashing their government’s record and talking about sacking their rivals if they win. After 16 years of iron discipline, which helped them steamroller through election after election, it’s all gone horribly wrong. And by ‘horribly’, I mean ‘gloriously’. But Unionists are in danger of becoming complacent.  On its face, the Sky News poll that accompanied Monday night’s SNP leadership debate was encouraging for supporters of the United Kingdom. Eight years after 45 per cent of Scots voted to break away, support for Scexit is down to 39 per cent.

After a tumultuous two weeks, voting is now open for the SNP leadership elections until 27 March. But are members any closer to knowing who they'll vote for? At the Glasgow hustings, Michael Russell, president of the SNP, urged members to get their votes in as soon as possible. But while the Scottish National party appears keen to see the majority of votes cast within the next few days, it is worthwhile remembering just how many ‘undecideds’ there were in the last SNP member poll. A third of those questioned by Savanta didn’t know who they’d be backing, while another third expressed their support for Humza Yousaf and a quarter said they’d back Kate Forbes.

With only a day to go until voting for the next SNP leader starts, candidates don’t have long left to convince members to back them. So perhaps it’s little wonder that tensions are running high. The favourite for the contest Humza Yousaf has secured the backing of John Swinney, with the Deputy First Minister publicly endorsing Yousaf this weekend as his preferred candidate for SNP leader.  Nicola Sturgeon has said she will not endorse a candidate but as Swinney is her close ally the move has raised eyebrows – particularly given the timing.

Today was the penultimate party hustings of the SNP leadership contest, this time with Glasgow party members quizzing the leadership contenders. Did they want to know about what the next leader of the SNP thinks about the constitution perhaps, or the race to save Scotland’s NHS? Not quite. Instead, it appears what really matters to the SNP membership is, erm, the Stone of Destiny, ITV Borders and, naturally, berating England. One member asked at the hustings: ‘We thought we were entitled to a referendum; Westminster said no. We passed the gender recognition [reform bill], ‘no’. Now coming up is a coronation. Do they want our stone? Oh yes. Will they ask us? No, they’ll just take it. If they want it, they’ll have to ask. Our answer will be what?

Have the SNP leadership candidates learned from the mistakes of their first televised debate? Kate Forbes, Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan competed to trash the SNP's legacy when they went head-to-head earlier this week. Last night's Channel 4 clash was tamer: the trio were at pains to defend their party's record in government. But while the atmosphere was more civil, viewers didn't learn a huge amount more about the candidates' plans for Scotland. Kate Forbes was quick to plaster over Tuesday’s wounds, saying that it has been a ‘privilege to serve alongside Humza Yousaf in government and to serve under Nicola Sturgeon’ – though she did not apologise to Yousaf, when prodded by host Krishnan Guru-Murthy, for her attacks two days previously.

‘Now is not the time,’ successive Tory prime ministers told Nicola Sturgeon following her persistent calls for another independence referendum. It’s simply too soon after the last one, they said. In August, the Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, caused fury in nationalist circles after he stated there would need to be at least 60 per cent support for independence in opinion polls before the UK government would respond to further Section 30 referendum requests. Strange, then, that this Tory message appears to be exactly what the SNP leadership candidates were parroting in Tuesday night’s now infamous STV debate.

Kate Forbes has made her case. She handily won last night’s STV debate between contenders for Nicola Sturgeon’s job. She spoke past the contest, which will be decided by SNP members, to the country at large, that latter constituency having been forgotten in the process to chose the next first minister. She brought the conversation back time and again to the need to listen to those who don’t support independence and to govern Scotland’s public services competently. If you want to ask people to put you in charge of an independent country, Forbes’s argument runs, you’ll have to show them you can run a devolved one first.

Scotland has the worst drug death rate in Europe. More than half a million Scots are on hospital waiting lists. The NHS is being privatised by stealth as more and more Scots go private. We don’t hear much about this in the endless SNP leadership hustings. Instead there is an air of self-congratulation that things aren’t worse. Candidates have distanced themselves from the Scottish government’s chaotic deposit return scheme for bottles and cans. But that isn’t the only environmental disaster waiting to happen. Sales of petrol and diesel cars in Scotland are to be banned in seven years, yet the electric charging infrastructure is so bad people are turning away from electric vehicles.

Ed Miliband must be relieved. With Ash Regan’s idea for an ‘independence thermometer’, a giant screen or billboard visually representing progress towards various aspects of independence, his ‘Edstone’ now has competition for the most ridiculous idea ever presented by a UK politician during an election campaign. It is a measure of how absurd the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon has become that Regan’s Heath Robinson-esque brainwave has caused only mild amusement. Regan followed up her inspiration by going full Braveheart and endorsing Alex Salmond’s idea of withholding the Stone of Destiny from the upcoming coronation. Quite how this benefits the people of Scotland or advances the cause of independence was left unclear.

The SNP leadership has turned into open civil war. Alex Salmond has shafted the frontrunner Humza Yousaf who tried to shaft Kate Forbes, who was, in turn, shafted by Nicola Sturgeon. No wonder long-suffering deputy First Minister, John Swinney, has resigned.  Swinney’s departure came on the day Salmond torpedoed Yousaf, Sturgeon’s chosen successor, by claiming he had skipped Holyrood's landmark gay marriage vote in 2014 due to 'religious pressure'. Yousaf says his ‘recollection is different’, but his position is now untenable. His account is contradicted by the minister who was in charge of the 2014 equal marriage vote, Alex Neil, and now the then first minister, Salmond.

No wonder they didn't want to let cameras in at last night's hustings. Not a day goes by it seems without a leading SNP politician embarrassing themselves in one forum or another. Today's hapless half-wit is MP John Nicolson, who has found himself accused of racism after tweeting a video shortly before appearing on the BBC’s Debate Night. Preparing to go on air, the member for Ochil and South Perthshire tried his hand at social media influencing, giving his very own ill-thought make up tutorial in the green room. Addressing the camera in the video captioned ‘Politicians that do their own makeup tend to “tandoori” themselves’, Nicolson declared: ‘Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking John Nicolson doesn’t need make up!