Scottish Labour... a disaster movie in the making
If Richard Leonard’s colleagues ever succeed in shoving him out the door, he has another job ready and waiting for him. His attempts to spar with Nicola Sturgeon at first Minister’s Questions, albeit feeble, could double as an audition for a new career path.
‘Multiple Covid clusters in universities across Scotland. Hundreds of students self-isolating. Students are waiting for tests. frontline university staff at risk of catching and spreading Covid-19.’
It’s like he begrudges you the verbs. But this staccato sentence structure would make him a perfect narrator of film trailers. You know, those portentous blockbusters about the end of the world, or as Scottish Labour calls it, the 2021 election.
Questions are asked. In such a way. As to make them sound. So. Very. Ominous. Coming soon to a ballot box nowhere near you.
Sturgeon had her own script ready: ‘Had we been in a position where we had said that no students could be at university, Richard Leonard might have asked here today – perfectly legitimately – what we were going to do to get education back for young people.’
As answers go, it wasn’t great but at least it was in the form of a sentence.
The Scottish Government was warned that letting students flock to freshers’ week without testing them first would lead to chaos, but chose to go ahead anyway. In fairness, this Government should probably avoid anything that involves the words ‘students’ and ‘testing’ for a while. The first Minister pleaded that ‘we all have to accept the responsibility of playing our part’ and that students had to ‘know what to do and abide by the rules’.
I’m sure undergraduates, famed for their responsibility and rule-following, will heed her words. No one’s saying you shouldn’t speed-chug off-brand cider and race shopping trolleys around the quadrangle, but please remember to socially distance at all times.
In all, 600 students are in lockdown at
Glasgow University, but the first Minister cautioned opposition members not to ‘undermine confidence in the test and protect system’. No wonder. It doesn’t need the help.
Leonard cited comments from Alastair Sim, who seems to have branched out from Scrooge and The Belles of St Trinian’s to head up Universities Scotland, and had told BBC Radio Scotland that there ‘wasn’t enough kit available at the beginning of term’.
BUT it was Leonard who was cancelling Christmas: ‘What is the first Minister planning in order to avoid students either being confined in accommodation away from their families over Christmas or returning home with the fear and real risk that they are spreading Covid-19 to their friends and families back home?’
‘Ugh!’ ‘Tuh!’ ‘Hmph!’ The Government backbenches emitted wails like Mary Whitehouse hearing her first pre-watershed ‘bloody’. A frustrated Sturgeon scolded him that he was ‘not helping anybody’. Now she knows what it’s like to be a Labour MSP. ‘None of this is easy for anybody,’ she rebuked Leonard.
Hark, chimed in Patrick Harvie: ‘I do not pretend that any of this is easy, but it is the responsibility of the parliament to raise these issues in a constructive manner.’
An awkward hush from the saltire squad. ‘Outbreaks such as these should have been expected,’ he stated, ‘and support and testing sites should have been in place before the term started’. He even compared the decision to let students cram together in halls of residence to the densely packed cruise ships seen at the start of the outbreak.
Sturgeon looked as if she’d like to chuck him overboard from one.
Nonetheless, he pushed further: ‘The first Minister has not yet told us this, so I ask her to tell us now. Exactly what proportion of Scotland’s new cases are accounted for by outbreaks in student accommodation?’
He got no number, but if he’s not careful, he’s going to get himself kicked out of the SNP. He’d have to set up a political party all of his own.