Cabinet failures pay the price at long last

NICOLA STURGEON finally swung the axe but in truth her reshuffle has come far too late.

Her hand had been stayed by a lack of fresh talent and, in the case of Shona Robison, by friendship.

The overdue departures of Miss Robison from Health, Angela Constance from Communities and Keith Brown from Economy need not detain us long.

Miss Robison looked out of her depth throughout her Health tenure, given to endless consultations when what was needed was rapid reform.

How Miss Constance survived after a disastrous spell at Education is anyone’s guess and Mr Brown, newly anointed SNP deputy leader, has taken a hefty pay cut as reward for his loyalty.

The SNP is a party for whom appearance counts more than substance, where the glossy words of PR are favoured over sound legislation, and so the handling of the reshuffle was a masterclass in sophistry.

There have been Cabinet rejigs for as long as there have been Cabinets, so why pretend that a new sort of way of doing business had been invented?

We were asked to believe that, rather than being sacked, Miss Robison, Miss Constance and Mr Brown had simultaneously decided to quit. The arrogance of the SNP spin team (as recently as Sunday, they were denying a shake-up was coming) is breathtaking but could not disguise the reality that the reshuffle is the result of public exasperation with a top team failing to handle fundamentals.

Scotland is crying out for new ideas so what will Jeane Freeman, a former Communist, bring to Health? Her approach at Welfare has been cautious, not trailblazing, and she was implicated in the traducing of a nurse who dared question SNP stewardship of the NHS.

The scale of her task now is vast and the tired mantra of more money for the NHS is no answer. One thing is clear: Miss Freeman must hit the ground running after four years of Miss Robison’s prevarication.

Humza Yousaf now has a lot on his plate at Justice, where Police Scotland lurches from crisis to crisis and relentless softtouch policies have put criminals, not victims, at the heart of the system.

His callow admission that he was no transport expert when he was Transport Minister was a blunder, as was his conviction for driving without insurance. He was lucky to survive both and must now raise his game.

Similarly, Michael Matheson swaps roles with Mr Yousaf to take Transport and his Invisible Man approach will not transform a rail network that is too expensive and too unreliable – nor will it tackle disgraceful roads. Though they promised a lean approach, the Cabinet has now doubled in size since Alex Salmond’s day, yet finance supremo Derek Mackay is handed an expanded portfolio.

The return of dogmatic Mike Russell – practically Miss Sturgeon’s first act on becoming First Minister in 2014 was to sack him – raises eyebrows. He is to tackle relations with the UK Government amid Brexit, despite Ian Blackford already burning bridges with Westminster.

And John Swinney’s move to Education was meant to bolster the SNP’s claims that school pupils were the party’s key focus.

Mr Swinney stays put, but how peculiar that he chose yesterday to shelve his Education Bill, flagship of reforms that have, thus far, advanced at glacial pace.

While an old guard of Roseanna Cunningham, Fiona Hyslop and Fergus Ewing remain, new blood arrives with Aileen Campbell at Communities and Shirley-Anne Somerville at Welfare.

They join an expanded Cabinet of whom Scots are entitled to expect much. Can they deliver?