Euan McColm

A great modern Scottish myth is that the handling of the coronavirus pandemic by government ministers in Edinburgh was vastly superior to that of their counterparts in London. This rather distasteful display of Scottish exceptionalism ignores the fact that where the UK government got things right, so did the Scottish and that, likewise, mistakes were replicated on both sides of the border. This should come as a surprise to nobody. Quite rightly, both the UK and Scottish governments moved in lockstep throughout the worst of the pandemic, with scientific advisers and ministers in regular cross-border contact.

After the SNP won its first Holyrood election in 2007, foolish council leaders across Scotland rushed to sign up to what then finance secretary John Swinney described as a 'historic concordat'. In return for Swinney pulling back from his threat to centralise education, Scotland’s 32 local authorities agreed to uphold the nationalists’ promise to freeze council tax rates. Lots of councillors swanked about, bragging about this brilliant deal. Look at us, they said, we’ve got a 'historic concordat'. It appears that Yousaf has announced a flagship policy that he is simply unable to cost. And then reality slapped them across their faces. Swinney had stitched them up good and proper. The 'historic concordat' was worth less than the paper it was written on.

SNP members really are the cheapest dates in UK politics — they’ll lap up any old swill dished out by their leaders. After the Yes campaign in the 2014 independence referendum was defeated, the nationalist faithful unquestioningly accepted repeated promises from Nicola Sturgeon that they’d soon have a second chance — and that, this time, they’d win. The problem with the former Scottish First Minister’s position was that, for all her energising rhetoric, she didn’t have the authority to run another vote on the constitution. Sturgeon could, and frequently did, claim to be in possession of a mandate to deliver Indyref2 but she did not. Constitutional matters are reserved to Westminster and no amount of SNP anger can change that.

Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has his flaws as a politician but when it comes to the brutal attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, his response has been clear, dignified and – given his family’s current circumstances – courageous. Yousaf has risen to the moment. The SNP leader’s parents-in-law, Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla of Dundee, are currently trapped in Gaza, running out of food and fearful for their lives. The First Minister’s wife, Nadia, is said, unsurprisingly, to be distraught. Having spent several hours trying to make contact with her parents, in Gaza to visit her elderly grandmother, Ms El-Nakla has been able to speak to her mother who described the impact of Israel’s retaliation to Saturday’s terrorist outrage during which hundreds were murdered.

The SNP has never been noted for its capacity for self-reflection. Each and every time it suffers defeat, it plays the card marked victimhood. Dark forces, rather than its own incompetence, are aways to blame when things don’t go to plan. The SNP has reacted to defeat in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election with predictable gracelessness. Perhaps the perfect example of this inability to ask whether the party could have done things differently came in 2014 when the Yes campaign was heavily defeated in the independence referendum. Rather than wondering whether his threadbare plan for secession might have turned voters off, former SNP leader Alex Salmond pointed the finger at both the BBC and the Treasury.

When the Scottish writer Gillian Philip posted a tweet in 2020, she could not have imagined the devastating consequences that would follow. At the time, her fellow author JK Rowling was under relentless attack for her view that a conflict exists between women’s right to use single sex spaces, such as refuges, and moves to allow trans people to use such facilities on the basis of self-identification. Philip shared the Harry Potter creator’s concerns about male-bodied individuals accessing places set up to support women traumatised by men’s violence and added the hashtag #ISTANDWITHROWLING to her Twitter bio. And then her world came crashing down. The online mob came for Philip, denouncing her as a bigot, as a vicious transphobe.

There is no problem in Scottish society for which the SNP will not try to apportion at least some of the blame to ‘Westminster’. The brave Scottish nationalist does his best in the face of endless obstacles placed in his way by malign unionist forces. But only independence will allow him the freedom to address the vast array of pressing issues, both social and economic, facing the oppressed people of North Britain. Reality has just called the nationalists’ bluff Of course, the SNP’s determination to hold the UK government to account for things over which it has no control is utterly cynical. But that’s nationalism, for you.

Nobody ever accused the SNP of being consistent but when it comes to the question of EU membership, the party’s position is positively incoherent. At a Saltire-strewn rally in Edinburgh on Saturday, party leader and Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf told a crowd of around 5,000 (or 25,000 if you believe organisers’ spin) that Brexit was 'nothing short of a national tragedy'. Only independence could right this 'historic wrong'. Given that almost two-thirds of Scots voted Remain in 2016 this is seductive stuff, but the credibility of Yousaf’s message depends on us ignoring the fact that just two years before the UK voted for Brexit, the Nats campaigned for an outcome that would have seen Scotland leave the EU.

As plot twists go, it’s a doozy. Five months ago, Murray Foote resigned as the SNP’s communications director after misleading journalists over party membership numbers. The former editor of the Daily Record stormed off, throwing a grenade over his shoulder. He had only misled journalists because he himself had been misled. A day after Foote’s departure (political cliché level: bombshell), the SNP’s chief executive Peter Murrell took responsibility for the mess and fell on his sword. Now, in a remarkable turn of events, Foote is back in the game. On Monday, he takes up the position of SNP chief executive. He’s the new Peter Murrell. The SNP spin goes that Foote was the standout candidate amid a very strong field.

Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, Moira Knox was one of the biggest names on the Edinburgh Fringe. She was guaranteed acres of newspaper coverage and never had to update her routine. Knox, a Tory councillor in the Scottish capital, was a rumbling – but entirely approachable – outrage machine. A tabloid reporter looking for a quick hit could depend upon her to condemn the 'offensive' content of a whole range of Fringe shows. Whether it was the use of profanity or the exposure of genitalia during a performance, Councillor Knox was ready to react.  No good will come of this cowardice. Any erosion of freedom of expression is bad for everyone Of course, the politician’s words of condemnation never had the effect she desired.

We must hope Nicola Sturgeon’s remaining supporters are, right now, judging her. That’s what she wanted, after all. In a speech back in 2015 — the year she led the SNP to its third Holyrood election victory — Sturgeon said education would be her priority during her time in office. 'Let me be clear,' she said, 'I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people then what are you prepared to. It really matters.' Of course, it was easy for Sturgeon to demand she be judged because she knew she wouldn’t be. None of her supporters was willing to rock the boat by pointing out the many ways in which the SNP had failed teachers and pupils.

The first by-election in Scotland since the SNP’s change of leadership is a huge test for First Minister Humza Yousaf. If the nationalists lose the seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, made vacant when constituents recalled their MP Margaret Ferrier after she broke Covid rules, Yousaf will face difficult questions about his party’s direction of travel. As one nationalist activist puts it: 'The last SNP MP got chucked out in disgrace and Humza’s ratings are still in the minuses, so who’d bet against us losing?' Unlike his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon — who dominated her party and enjoyed the support of the vast majority of its members — the current First Minister firmly divides opinion among the SNP rank and file.

Scottish Labour lined up behind the SNP’s bungled attempt to reform the Gender Recognition Act last year and in doing so the party set itself firmly against the majority of voters. Around two-thirds of Scots are opposed to the SNP's gender bill, but Labour chose to ignore their views and back the nationalists’ controversial legislation instead. When Scottish Secretary Alister Jack intervened to block reform of the gender bill by Holyrood — on the grounds that changing the law in Scotland would negatively impact on the UK-wide equality act — the Labour party found itself unable to cash in. While the Scottish Tories loudly proclaimed their support for the majority view on self-ID, Labour MSPs preferred not to discuss it at all.

Angus MacNeil's attempt to hold the SNP to ransom on the matter of independence has played out both predictably and rather entertainingly. After the SNP MP was suspended for a week over an unseemly public spat with Chief Whip Brendan O’Hara, MacNeil announced he would not consider seeking readmission to SNP ranks until October. Once the party's autumn conference has taken place, MacNeil said that he will then decide whether the party has, to his satisfaction, redoubled its efforts to achieve independence. MacNeil has taken a hostage. The only problem is that the hostage is himself — and party leader Humza Yousaf has no desire to pay the ransom.

Perhaps Humza Yousaf’s greatest achievement in his first 100 days as First Minister is that he has survived them. Since succeeding Nicola Sturgeon in March, Yousaf has stumbled from crisis to crisis. His leadership has played out like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone where, long ago, the lead character got the message that they should be careful what they wish for. The new First Minister inherited a party that showed no sign of losing its position as the dominant force in Scottish politics. Three months on, the SNP is in a mess with voters abandoning it in favour of a unionist Labour party.  Yousaf took power promising his supporters he’d built on the progress made towards independence by Sturgeon.

Members of the Scottish Labour party may be forgiven for feelings of jubilation following publication of a new poll. Sir Keir Starmer arrived in Leith near Edinburgh this morning to be met by comrades cheered by the suggestion their party is on course to defeat the SNP at a general election for the first time since 2010. A Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times has Labour winning 26 of Scotland’s 59 seats and the nationalists just 21. Given that Labour took only one seat in Scotland in 2019 while the SNP won 48, this would mark quite the reversal of fortunes. But Labour supporters who believe this poll signals the beginning of the end for the SNP’s political dominance in Scotland would be wise to insert a degree of caution into their analysis.

Boris Johnson’s dwindling brigade of supporters point to the Conservatives’ landslide election win of 2019 as evidence he’s too gifted a politician for his party to lose. But they conveniently ignore the fact his charm stopped working at the border with Scotland. Voters across much of England may have flocked to Johnson but he repelled many Scots. In 2019, the SNP won back 13 of the 21 seats it had lost two years previously, when Theresa May was prime minister. The Tories lost seven Scottish seats. There is a particular caricature of the distant, uncaring Conservative that repels Scottish voters. And that caricature is Boris Johnson-shaped.

The arrest of Nicola Sturgeon by police investigating allegations of fraud within the SNP was hardly unexpected. After all, her husband – the party’s former chief executive, Peter Murrell – and the SNP's past treasurer, Colin Beattie MSP, have already spent time helping officers with their enquiries. It was only a matter of time until the cops got to Sturgeon.  Nonetheless, the shock of news – broken in a tweet from Police Scotland at 2.29pm on Sunday afternoon – that she was in custody as a suspect was undiminished.  Until her surprise resignation as SNP leader – and, thus, first minister of Scotland – in February, Sturgeon was widely considered one of the pre-eminent political figures of her generation.

Not so very long ago, Scotland’s nationalist minority was mustering behind a catastrophic plan to treat the next general election as a 'de facto' referendum. Having over-promised for years about her ability to deliver a second vote on the constitution, former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon declared that a majority of votes for pro-independence candidates would give her the green light to open secession talks with whoever was prime minister. 'Hurrah!' cheered nationalists, 'This is a brilliant idea.' Then Sturgeon resigned amid a police investigation into her party and was succeeded by Humza Yousaf, who declared he was not in favour of Sturgeon’s 'de facto' referendum idea. No matter the concessions Westminster makes, the nationalists cry betrayal 'Hurrah!