Scotland

Junkets are like buses: you wait ages for one to come along and then two do at once. For this month, it's not just London mayor Sadiq Khan on a transatlantic taxpayer-funded jolly: Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon launches her American charm offensive next week too. Good thing that all is going well currently in both parts of the UK then. While both politicians sit for different parties in different assemblies, they both share a similar love of the limelight, with a penchant for selfies, statements and sojourns abroad. And it's for that reason that both politicians are seeking to go above and beyond their constitutional remits on both their respective trips. Take Sadiq Khan, the achingly right-on manager of the metropolis.

Hurrah! A Scottish Government press release announces, with no small modicum of pride, that it has at last located the mysterious missing documents in the ferries saga. Audit Scotland, the public body which runs the rule over Holyrood’s spending of taxpayers’ money, recently conceded defeat over this matter. It had spent considerable time and effort trying get to the bottom of the SNP’s 2015 decision to buy two ferries from a shipyard owned by a Scottish Government economic advisor — against the advice of its own ferry agency. Seven years on, the initial cost of £97m has ballooned to £250m and neither of the ferries has been completed. The outstanding questions were: who took the decision to award the contracts — and why?

It was Enoch Powell who remarked that 'the House of Commons without whips is like a city without sewers.' And it seems that the piping has sprung a leak, given the amount of excrement that's been flying around Westminster in recent months. In January it was the Tory whips and their chief Mark Spencer, who faced allegations of intimidation and Islamophobia from disgruntled wards. And now it's the turn of the SNP, those custodians of probity and standards in public life. For Patrick Grady – the party's former chief enforcer at Westminster – is one of two nationalist MPs facing claims of sexual harassment. An SNP staffer says the Glasgow North MP put his fingers down the back of his collar and touched his hair in London’s Water Poet bar in 2016 when he was 19.

In the final weeks before the 2014 Scottish referendum, the last independent Clydeside shipbuilder went bust. The SNP was boasting about ‘one of the world’s wealthiest nations’ going it alone, so when it went pop something had to be done. A millionaire adviser to Alex Salmond was lined up to buy it on the understanding that he’d bid for government contracts. A year later, a £100 million deal was struck to build two ferries. That deal quickly ran aground. There was no sign of the ferries by 2018 and the bill had doubled to £200 million.

Last night, Mr Steerpike was on his way back to Glasgow Central station from a game between Ayr United and Partick Thistle, sipping a hot water and lemon. He would have liked something stronger, only the Scottish government — which took control of Scotland’s railway services on April 1 — has extended the Covid-era ban on the consumption of booze on trains. Some rebellious passengers were flouting the government’s rules, however. Among them, Mr Steerpike observed, appeared to be Mhairi Black — the SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (and subject of Tracey Ullman parody).

Throughout the past three years, both Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford have never been shy about taking a swing at Boris Johnson. Whether it be pandemic restrictions or Brexit negotiations, the SNP and Labour first ministers are among the first to stick the boot into their London counterpart in their haste to distance themselves from those dreadfully corrupt Tories. So Mr S was amused to see that for all their proclamations about the superiority of the squeaky-clean systems at Holyrood and Cardiff Bay, both administrations have now been dragged into the unfolding scandal around Liberty Steel.

The finest QCs in all of Twitterdom have made much out of the Johnson government, firing off law suits at the drop of the hat. But while token victories at London's High Court are trumpeted as earth-shattering defeats for the wicked Tories, the shenanigans of Nicola Sturgeon's government in Scotland get far less publicity in the Fleet Street press. For this week the SNP regime was (again) found guilty of breaching laws regarding freedom of information. For the Scotsman newspaper has won a decisive victory this week, forcing ministers to publish legal advice they received about a second independence referendum after a thirteen-month battle between the paper and the Scottish Government.

Around 700,000 Scottish households – a quarter of the country – are facing £1,000 fines for failing to complete the census. Eleven years ago, the last time the census was run, it took 10 days to reach the current response rate of 74 per cent. This time it’s taken over a month. There’s not much hope in getting the rate up either. Studies from the US show census return rates don’t improve after the first few weeks.  If 700,000 households are to be fined this would be the largest prosecution in Scottish legal history, probably British too. In 2011 – where the final response rate was 94 per cent and over 90 per cent in all council areas – just five people were reported to prosecutors. By the following February there’d only been one conviction.

Dogs bark, cows moo and the SNP duck their failings. It seems as though every day brings fresh revelations about Nicola Sturgeon's regime in Scotland as more and more questions are asked about her party's record in office. The only novelty is the sheer range of scandals which can outrage, shock and rile: last week it was the terf war and her plans to rig the electorate. Today it's ferries and the news that, once again, proper records were not kept of the Scottish Government's mismanaged takeover of the Ferguson shipyard. For Audit Scotland has now demanded a fresh review about how an initial £97 million deal for two vessels spiralled into a quarter of a billion pound disaster with two new lifeline vessels still out of service after six years.

It seems that the spirit of COP26 is still alive and well in Edinburgh. For the SNP's parliamentarians have begun recycling their speeches at Holyrood, regardless of the occasion. Amid claims that the Scottish nationalists are nothing but a bunch of unthinking, zombie–like drones, blindly following the latest directive from Bute House, backbencher Willie Coffey MSP has decided to, er, conform exactly to type.  For the Kilmarnock MSP caused laughter in the Scottish parliament yesterday by delivering a concluding speech when standing up to introduce a debate. Coffey opened his closing remarks by saying:  Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thought that I was closing the debate, so this is a closing speech, as I am sure members will soon hear...

The blessed Nicola has been out on the campaign trail in recent days, spreading the good news and decrying that wicked Boris Johnson's non-believing band of heretic Tories. The bad king's woes down in London have proved a godsend to Saint Nicola the nationalist, ever eager to lead her people to that land of milk and honey otherwise known as an independent Scotland. Naturally the sinless Sturgeon was among the first to call for Johnson to quit over partygate, preaching how 'basic decency' meant he should go for breaking lockdown rules. 'But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!' For just four days after demanding the heathen Johnson go, it seems the good queen Nic also defied the holy laws of Covid herself.

It is said in Westminster that Boris Johnson likes to surround his 5ft 6in Chancellor with tall ministers to make him feel small. And up at Holyrood, Nicola Sturgeon has clearly taken a leaf from the Prime Minister's book, judging by the ministers with whom she surrounds herself. After suffering a reversal at last year's elections, Sturgeon was forced to take the Scottish Greens into government: a marriage of political convenience but one that no doubt reaffirms Humza Yousaf's faith in his own intellectual prowess. For the Greens are led by a duumvirate of Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie, a man diminutive both in size and in stature.

If Boris Johnson has a superpower, it is the ability to make others pay the price for his wrongdoing. Today the whipping boy is Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, though it must be said Ross walked clear-eyed into the path of the scourge. That’s another of the Prime Minister’s skills: he can convince people that it would be in everyone’s interest if they maximised their exposure to political risk so that he may minimise his. In the run-up to the Iraq War, a bunch of peace-mongering oddballs flew to Baghdad to offer themselves as human shields and Tories who volunteer to take flak for Boris give off much the same energy.

A minister in the Scottish government has likened people who share my opinions to racists or anti-Semites. Apparently my views on how best to support and include transgender people in society place me on the same footing as those who condemn and exclude others based on their race. This latest outrage comes from Lorna Slater, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens – Nicola Sturgeon’s junior partners in government. While complaining that the BBC should not give ‘anti-trans’ people a platform, Slater has claimed that: ‘We wouldn’t put balance on the question of racism or anti-Semitism, but we allow this fictional notion of balance when it comes to anti-trans [views]. The whole thing is disgusting.

Few of Nicola Sturgeon's promises have aged worse than her pledge to be ‘the most accessible First Minister ever’. The SNP launched its council elections campaign yesterday but refused to invite any print journalists: an effective press blackout designed to shield the party’s leader from questions on policy. Some newspapers declined to cover the event; others denounced it as a sham. As Conor Matchett of the Scotsman points out, the move is in keeping with the party’s long-term media strategy: a broad distrust of the print press and a belief that independence and SNP support will be won online and on TV and not through legacy media.

The Ukraine crisis claims another victim. Step forward George Galloway, the mystic Myrtle who bet in February that the country would not be invaded by Moscow. The journeyman politician is in something of a strop at present, after Twitter took the step of labelling his account as 'Russia state-affiliated media' following a series of bizarre takes on the conflict. Addressing the social media giant publicly, Gorgeous George moaned that: Dear @TwitterSupport I am not “Russian State Affiliated media”. I work for NO #Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action. Ah, legal action – the classic GG move.