Pathetic snub to Boris is typical of the divisive SNP
‘Threat to quarantine English visitors angered tourist trade’
AT THE start of the Covid-19 crisis there was a brief political truce. All parties, it seemed, were going to try to pull together for the good of the country. If it sounded too good to last, it was quickly blown apart by the SNP, which has lost no opportunity to exploit the crisis for its separatist agenda.
When Boris Johnson visited Scotland yesterday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon treated him as some foreign interloper, announcing that she had no plans to meet him.
It was a pathetic snub to the Prime Minister. Surely Sturgeon could have made some use of his visit – say to persuade him to look at helping parts of the economy that have been especially hard hit in Scotland.
Moreover, the UK government is involved in delicate negotiations over Britain’s future relationship with the EU, with the EU demanding access to UK fishing waters – a matter of acute importance to Scottish ports. Didn’t the First Minister think that was a matter that she could usefully spend a few minutes of her time discussing with the Prime Minister?
The SNP is desperate to spin the narrative that the Scottish government has been measured and responsible in its response to the virus, while the UK government has been reckless and wayward.
BESIDES boasting of a run of days in which no deaths were recorded in Scotland, Sturgeon has made a veiled threat to quarantine English visitors, much to the anger of the Scottish tourism industry, which has reported cancellations as a result.
So far, the SNP seems to be winning its propaganda battle. Support for independence, reports John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, has grown since the 2014 referendum to the point at which it is conceivable a second vote held now could be won by the nationalists. But is the Scottish government’s handling of Covid-19 really that much superior to that of Johnson’s government?
Look at the raw figures – 18,484 cases in Scotland compared with 255,038 in England – and of course there is a dramatic difference.
But England has more than 10 times the population. As for the rate of infection, Scotland has 340 per 100,000 and England 456. The death rate in Scotland is 46 per 100,000 compared with 73 in England.
But as revealed last week, Public Health England has been recording deaths in a different way – which flatters the Scottish figures. In England, a death is recorded as a Covid death if someone has ever tested positive for Covid-19. In Scotland, it only goes down as a Covid death if they tested positive in the previous 28 days.
Moreover, Scotland has carried out 333,000 tests, fewer than one in 30 of the 10.4 million tests carried out in the UK as a whole. Given that it has just under one tenth of the population, it appears that the testing programme there is a lot less intensive. The more you test, the more cases you will pick up – especially considering that as many as four in five people infected with Covid 19 experience no symptoms whatsoever.
There are good reasons why Scotland ought to have been less afflicted than England. It has fewer densely-packed urban areas. Fewer people commute long distances in packed trains.
And Scottish airports were receiving fewer flights from the Far East when the disease was spreading silently around the world in January and February.
In one important respect, Scotland has done a lot worse than England – the rate of deaths in care homes has been even higher there than it has south of the border.
NICOLA Sturgeon has constantly attacked the Westminster government for relaxing lockdown too soon.Yet in practice she has taken virtually the same measures, just a few days later. For example, pubs reopened in England on July 4 and in Scotland on July 15. The SNP resisted reopening schools for weeks, contrasting its caution with what it saw as recklessness in England. Yet, after anger from Scottish parents, it was forced to commit to the full reopening of schools next month.
But even if you did buy the SNP’s claim to have handled the crisis better than the Conservative government, why the case for full independence?
The crisis has shown off the extent of devolved powers under current arrangements.
What Scotland would lose under independence, on the other hand, is the financial muscle to buy its way out of a very deep economic hole. The UK is set to run a frightening budget deficit this year, but relative to GDP it is nothing compared with the deficit that an SNP-led independent Scotland would find itself running.
The Scots, of course, have every right to decide whether they want to remain part of the United Kingdom. They voted to do so in 2014. The SNP should respect that result and stop trying to use every opportunity to pull the country apart.