Don’t let Nicola use Brexit as distraction

BREXIT is proving a very handy distraction for Nicola Sturgeon. She started last week making vainglorious threats about Holyrood throwing a spanner into the work of extracting the UK from the EU.

Then she engaged in a fruitless showboating photo-opportunity in Brussels where she talked of ‘open doors’ and ‘Scotland’s voice being heard’.

Not by the Spanish, apparently, who insist the UK is the EU member and so only the UK Government is competent to discuss the deal to pave the way for Brexit.

The welcome for the First Minister may have been cordial, but it will still be a firm No from Madrid – with one eye on restive breakaway regions within Spain – should Scotland ever seek full membership of the EU.

And the latest wheeze for Miss Sturgeon is virtue signalling by writing to the Prime Minister demanding reassurances about EU citizens currently resident in Scotland.

Of course, no such assurances can be given with the entire Brexit situation in a state of utter flux and Miss Sturgeon knows full well that Mr Cameron has already indicated there will be no precipitous changes affecting non-UK citizens.

Miss Sturgeon is generating a lot of heat and light but little of substance. Meanwhile, at Bute House, the in-tray is filling with domestic woes crying out for attention.

One is the Named Person legislation, the deeply controversial scheme supposed to protect children by issuing every child in Scotland with a state-appointed snooper. The SNP has dogmatically pushed through the plan. Genuine concerns – from across the political spectrum and from within the world of childcare – that the system risks putting at-risk children in peril by squandering precious resources have been recklessly ignored.

The Nationalist spin doctors have hit high gear to defend the Named Person project, with risible claims that they will be like some sort of guidance teachers. No guidance teacher ever had the authority to undermine parents in the way Named Persons will be able to.

Elected Nationalists have been handed blandishments to trot out but the public remain – rightly – worried.

Now there is a new challenge to the scheme as campaigners say claims that the Named Person scheme has been successfully trialled in a series of pilot projects do not stand scrutiny.

The First Minister would serve the Scottish people she is always purporting to speak for better by urgently reconsidering this risky project and tackling the very many other real-world issues facing Scottish families.

Waffling about ‘Scotland being ripped out of Europe’ may play well with the hotheads within her party and make for good TV footage, but the First Minister needs to concern herself with the hard work of governance, not more castles-in-the-air constitutional wrangling.