May’s tactics expose the failings of SNP

DAVID Cameron’s grasp of the Scottish situation never felt sure-footed and so his rare official visits seemed perfunctory affairs.

Contrast that with Theresa May, who arrived in Edinburgh yesterday with a gloriously positive and sincere message.

‘As long as I am Prime Minister, I will never stand by and let our Union drift apart,’ she pledged.

What a tonic for Scots weary of the SNP’s constant agitation for Indyref 2, a disastrous distraction sought only by a hard-core separatist minority.

Mrs May is clear she is fighting this election so she has the strongest possible hand when delivering the Brexit vote the country delivered last year.

She will not allow talk of Indyref 2 to distract from that and so the Nationalist raison d’être is shelved.

And to head off Nationalist howls of indignation about being dictated to by Downing Street, she has left the ultimate decision to the Scottish people.

A referendum is still a possibility if the SNP can demonstrate a massive appetite for separation among the public.

Exactly what mechanism would be used to determine that is yet to be clarified.

What is already clear, however, is that it leaves the Nationalists with a monumental headache. All polls indicate support for independence has, at best, stalled.

Increasingly it looks as though Miss Sturgeon miscalculated horribly by rushing to insist the SNP would quickly steer an independent Scotland back into Europe.

Far from being a nation of Europhiles as Miss Sturgeon thought, even many within her own party are in no hurry to wrest power from Westminster only to hand it to far-off Brussels.

Yesterday, ably backed by Ruth Davidson, Mrs May unveiled a Scottish manifesto that is honest about the problems Scotland – and the rest of the UK – faces.

But it is also a viable blueprint for how we might tackle them, not least since the solutions are based on the broad shoulders of the United Kingdom as a whole.

Mrs May focused on education, a shameful disaster under the SNP. The Tories promise reform of financing and an overhaul of the disastrous Curriculum for Excellence.

Contrast those concrete promises with Nicola Sturgeon’s worthless claim that education was a priority for her independence-obsessed government.

The SNP doesn’t get business, seeing firms as a only dripping roast to be exploited and their hard-working employees as a source of endless cash. The Tories by contrast want to grow the economy, not raid it; to make Scotland an attractive place to do business and raise children.

So the stage is set for a titanic battle between the SNP and the Tories, such is the precipitous fall of Labour.

The latter’s prospectus is out too, and what a dispiriting read it is. Renationalisation of key industries (uncosted, of course); a new Union-dominated Ministry of Labour, the highest taxation levels for 70 years; the degradation of our nuclear defences; no controls on migration and a hopeless muddle over Brexit.

It’s the most extremist Labour manifesto for 35 years. But then, Mr Corbyn’s campaign chief was, until recently, a Communist party member and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (who was forced to apologise yesterday for suggesting IRA terrorists should be honoured) lists plotting the overthrow of capitalism among his recreations in Who’s Who.

Add in Labour’s shameful flip-flopping on the Union and the contrast between the key parties in Scotland could not be clearer.

Tory heads are rightly high for they offer Scots a chance to sideline an SNP whose indolence and ineptitude at Holyrood and Westminster have led to a wasted decade.