Scots left to suffer under 14 years of SNP’s misrule

A REPORT published today paints a damning picture of how badly Scotland has been governed under the SNP. We should not be surprised. Former leader Alex Salmond himself told us after the government was found to have acted unlawfully in its handling of an investigation into harassment complaints against him.

He said: “Scotland has not failed – its leadership has failed.”

The report – The SNP Record: good or bad? – sets out how the Scottish people have suffered in many key areas over the past 14 years of the party’s rule.

When I attended one of the country’s biggest comprehensive schools in East Kilbride, Scottish education was respected the world over. Since 2006 its pupils have fallen in international rankings from 10th to 19th in science, 11th to 23rd in reading and from 11th to 24th in maths.

It is a handicap the next generation will have to bear.

When I trained as a doctor at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in the 1980s, I would not have believed that by 2021 Glaswegian men would have a lower life expectancy than those in Venezuela, Libya or Iran – well below the rest of the UK and further behind the most affluent parts of Scotland.

The figures are even worse on drug deaths. Under the SNP, Scotland leads Europe. The mortality rate is three-and-a-half times that in the UK as a whole, yet England and Wales operate under the same drug legislation.

Similar failures can be seen in policing, local government and basic rights such as freedom of speech, where the SNP’s much-loathed hate crime legislation means Scots, who led the global enlightenment, are now less free to speak than other parts of the UK. The obsession with independence blinds the SNP to the human cost of its failure.