John Ferry

The SNP Scottish government has brought out its latest fantasy paper on secession. Never mind the party's nosediving popularity that could see the Nationalists kicked out of office in 2026. Or that your average Scot's enthusiasm for another referendum is on a par with their eagerness for another bout of Covid. The dream shall never die, as they say, so what choice do they have but to keep plugging away like a tiresome timeshare salesman? The new paper is titled An independent Scotland in the EU. It is presented as a realistic outline of how Scotland can remove itself from the UK and accede to the EU as an independent state. Outrageously for a paper produced by civil servants, it uses language and framing that is highly party political.

Picture the scene around a year from now. We've just had a general election. The SNP has gone from 48 MPs in 2019 to, say, 30. Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf announces he is starting the process of taking Scotland out of the UK in line with the policy his party adopted the previous year. Papers are published. Scottish civil servants are instructed to start preparing for secession. The new UK administration has already given its response: there is no mandate for independence and no legal basis for its implementation. Regardless, Yousaf and his team set off for London to demand Scotland's right to break away.

'I will lead by example in adhering to this Code and knowing it is an incredible privilege to serve the people of Scotland. I know that Ministers will do likewise,' is how First Minister, Humza Yousaf, ends the foreword to the latest edition of the Scottish Ministerial Code, published in July.   Just a couple of months later and Yousaf appears to have potentially broken the Code, which stipulates ministers must 'give accurate and truthful information to the Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity'.   As revealed in an investigation by These Islands, Yousaf made a false statement in relation to Scotland's renewables energy capacity back in June.

In retrospect, the computerised boat in the movie Titanic looked more believable than the one Nicola Sturgeon stood in front of the day she ‘launched’ the Glen Sannox ferry, almost six years ago. With its famously painted on windows and oddly delicate looking bulbous bow – one of many parts subsequently replaced as it was found not to be fit for purpose – we can look back now and wonder who they were trying to kid with their fakery. Historians might come to view that day as a microcosm of the SNP’s time in power.

It's Scotland's annual Gers shenanigans this week. If you don't already know, Gers stands for ‘Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland’. It is an official Scottish government statistics report that provides an estimate of the total amount of government revenue raised in Scotland versus the total amount of public spending benefitting the country. The gap between the two highlights the notional fiscal deficit. As the best available guide to the fundamentals a newly independent Scotland would start off with, the annual Gers updates create something of a feeding frenzy on the constitutional debate.

Tony Blair famously regretted his government's introduction of freedom of information laws. 'You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it,' he wrote in his memoirs. Blair complained that FOI is not used by 'the people' but by journalists as a mallet to beat the government over the head with. But in recent years in Scotland, FOI has at times been used by the public to reveal critical information the SNP administration at Holyrood would rather keep secret. An extraordinary FOI response was published this week, outlining secret advice on the prospects for an independent Scotland joining the EU.

The SNP Scottish government has rolled out its latest paper on independence, this time focused on citizenship. Like others in the series (this is the fifth paper on secession in twelve months) it offers nothing new, goes big on fantasising about a future that won't happen, and is completely removed from the day-to-day needs of Scots. The paper works off the assumption that an independent Scotland will be a member of the European Union. Yet it ignores the obvious economic and potential political impediments to this happening, at least in any reasonable timeframe.

The Nato summit in Vilnius has been an eventful one already. Even though no clear timeline for when the country can join the group was given, Ukraine’s hopes of one day becoming a Nato member were given a boost. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has hailed proposals as 'a strong package for Ukraine, and a clear path towards its membership in Nato.' And there are other parts of the final communique which carry more relevance closer to home — in particular, the alliance's renewed and notably strong language opposing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Yet the SNP government led by Humza Yousaf remains committed to an independent Scotland achieving Nato accession — while also formally ratifying the TPNW.

Have you opened a letter recently from your energy supplier and gasped at how much of your monthly budget is now going on electricity and gas? Are you living in constant pain or discomfort because you need an operation, but under the Scottish NHS you'll have to wait years for treatment? Or do you live on one of Scotland's islands and have been forced, for the first time in your life, to take to the streets in protest at the Scottish government's failure to provide lifeline ferry services for your community? If Scotland ever does cut away from the UK, the split is many years away. This makes it all the more frustrating that the Scottish government is spending millions of pounds on civil servants tasked with creating fantasy papers.

Kevin Pringle, Alex Salmond's old spin doctor, is back. Pringle was a key strategic adviser on the build up to the 2014 independence referendum and is ultimately one of the handful of people responsible for successfully – from a nationalist standpoint – moving Scottish politics off the left-right spectrum and onto one rooted in identity and sovereignty. His appointment as Humza Yousaf's 'official spokesperson and strategic political adviser', which brings Pringle back into the fold after a period away from politics, has been hailed as a smart move that could turn things around for the flailing new first minister. Will Pringle's strategic canniness halt the SNP's decline in the polls? I wouldn't bet on it.

In an extraordinary admission this week, the Scottish government has vowed to continue funding the SNP's ferries fiasco — despite accepting it would be cheaper to scrap the second vessel and commission a new one from scratch.  Economy secretary Neil Gray said a review had found that finishing the second boat, known as Hull 802, does not represent value for money. What's the background? The Scottish government commissioned two new vessels to serve on Scotland's west coast in 2015. None have been delivered by the now nationalised Glasgow shipyard that won the contract, while funding for the yard has become something of a financial blackhole for taxpayers.

There has been more ferry chaos this week for Scotland's beleaguered island communities, so much so that it now looks like the Scottish government is bringing in the Ministry of Defence to help with the fallout. One senior SNP MP, Ian Blackford, has urged military bosses to provide a ‘short-term solution’ to the ferry network breakdown. Blackford’s pleas come after warnings that, with further disruption to services, Highland companies could be at risk of going bust. On top of this, this last week has seen days of disruption after the MV Loch Seaforth, state owned ferry operator CalMac's largest vessel, developed problems with its engine control system. The boat is the main vessel linking the Isle of Lewis to the mainland.

Humza Yousaf is the continuity candidate. Kate Forbes is the fresh start candidate and Ash Regan is the Braveheart, director's cut, candidate. As far as character positioning goes, it's quite clear where each potential new first minister of Scotland stands. Digging deeper, clear policy differences have emerged between the three. Yousaf wants to directly challenge the UK government in court over its blocking of gender reform, where as Forbes and Regan would drop the issue. Forbes and Yousaf have intimated they will adopt a gradualist approach to independence, where as Regan insists she will somehow engineer separation talks with the UK government if pro-independence parties win more than 50 per cent of the vote at the next Westminster or Holyrood election.

Rising NHS waiting lists, a widening attainment gap in education and falling support for independence: Scotland's next first minister will have a bulging in-tray when he or she assumes office in coming weeks. However one issue in particular seems set to be an early thorn in the side of Scotland's new leader: the increasingly scandalous debacle of the ferries fiasco. The latest development is today's Scottish Government announcement of yet another delay in completing the vessels. The first of the boats, Hull 801, otherwise known as the Glen Sannox, is now expected to be ready sometime this autumn instead of May. The other boat, Hull 802, is now expected to be ready by autumn of next year instead of next March.

Watching Kate Forbes this week struggle to reconcile her social conservatism with her ambition to be First Minister of Scotland has been excruciating. But it has also deflected attention away from another important aspect of her politics: her economic conservatism. As well as sitting on the right on issues such as gay marriage, Forbes also gives every indication of being a fiscal conservative who is comfortable with austerity. Exhibit one is her role sitting on the SNP's 2018 Sustainable Growth Commission. The Commission's report was pitched as a realistic roadmap to independence. Unlike the land-of-milk-and-honey narrative that was sold to Scots in 2014, this group would face economic reality square in the face.

When Nicola Sturgeon looks back on her economic legacy, what will she feel most proud of: the big industrial plants on Scotland's coast churning out wind turbines for export, the near monthly launch of newly built ships on the Clyde, or the thriving green venture capital community sprouting up in Edinburgh? An inability to deal with economic reality is the final entry in the ledger of Sturgeon’s economic legacy That kind of fond reminiscing won't happen of course because none of these things exist. The fiasco of the Sturgeon administration trying to organise the building of new ferries on the Clyde while supposedly saving Scottish commercial shipbuilding is well documented. The two ferries at the centre of the farce are now five years late and at least £150 million over budget.

There have been strange goings on in Scotland. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court clarified that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to unilaterally call a second independence referendum. The ruling was never going to have gone down well with the SNP, but has the Supreme Court’s slap down sent the nationalist movement doolally?  Take the strange case of Michael Russell’s comparison of the current UK government to the British Raj in the days of the Empire. On Sunday, the president of the SNP and former Scottish government minister defended an article he had written in the pro-independence newspaper The National which appeared to draw this parallel. Is such a comparison appropriate, mused the host of BBC Radio Scotland’s The Sunday Show, in an interview with Russell.

The next UK general election will be a referendum on independence for Scotland. This is according to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, after the ‘disappointing’ Supreme Court ruling last week found that her administration did not in fact have the power to unilaterally rewrite the UK’s constitution. Will the people of Scotland really accept that the ballot box outcome in 2024 will represent a ‘de facto’ referendum that could lead to them being removed from the UK? With no legal or historic precedent for such an undertaking, the arbitrariness of the proposition would be comical if it were not so serious. But perhaps equally comical is the idea that Sturgeon's team is developing a serious plan for implementing economic independence.

SNP MP Stephen Flynn was emphatic when he used a certain statistic in Parliament last month: ‘Scotland’s potential in this regard is huge – absolutely enormous... We have 25 per cent of Europe's offshore wind capacity – 25 per cent!' he told his audience. It is not the first time Flynn has used the statistic, and neither is he the only SNP MP, or MSP, to use it. 'With more than 25 per cent of Europe’s capacity in wind energy, Scotland is set to become a massive producer and exporter of renewable energy,' wrote Angus Robertson MSP, the SNP's External Affairs and Culture Secretary at Holyrood, in a newspaper column in January.