Glasgow to Gloucester, Coldstream to Cornwall, this is a shot in the arm for the WHOLE of Britain

BRITAIN is getting ready for V- Day. Readers of this newspaper are aware because words to this effect were the splash headline on yesterday’s front page. A similar message has reached viewers of television news and anyone with half an ear on the radio.

Bulletins where the top story affects every life on these islands do not tend to go in one ear and out the other. They carry an intrinsic urgency. We stop what we are doing, listen and process.

The conclusion my processing has brought me to is that Britain is about to embrace brighter days – what one of its more memorable leaders might have described as sunlit uplands.

Whether you l i ve i n Glasgow or Gloucester, Cornwall or Coldstream, Aberdeen or Aberfan, the news is equally encouraging: this big place we live in – Britain – has become the first country on the planet to approve a vaccine which will protect us from coronavirus and, in the months to come, start to restore normality to our lives.

It will be rolled out across the land simultaneously. There is no geographical pecking order. So smile. If you are lucky enough to live in the United Kingdom, bathe in this long-awaited ray of light (here, if we are honest, far earlier than we feared) and feel some of that shoulder tension dissipate.

One British citizen who admitted this week to doing more smiling than usual was Nicola Sturgeon.

‘Today is genuinely a good day,’ she said on Wednesday before invoking another Churchill-ism – ‘the beginning of the end’ – as even Nationalists are wont to do when groping for gravitas in momentous times.

Havoc

And, on a human level, I do not begrudge her lighter mood. How many times from that podium in St Andrew’s House has the First Minister emoted about her distress in being the bearer of bad tidings?

How often have we been asked to believe that no one wished more than she that things were different, that there were some alternative to these agonising Scottish Governmental decisions wreaking havoc with lives – including, of course, her own?

Yes, Miss Sturgeon is right to smile because things are indeed looking up for her as they are for all Britons who have managed thus far to avoid the virus.

But, on a political level, I do hope behind the gaiety, there is a healthy dose of humility and some reflection on the circumstances which have brought us here.

Vaccines do not fall into Scottish laps direct from the Gods. They do not wing their way north of the Border courtesy of the cure fairies.

This one comes to us because the UK Government ordered tens of millions of units of it and because the UK medicines regulator worked exhaustively on our behalf to ensure that it was safe.

In the fullness of time, another Covid-19 vaccine – developed by scientists at Oxford University – will hopefully augment supplies. It is good to know they are looking to distribute it across Britain in the furtherance of what has been a UK-wide battle against a microscopic invader.

I say this because much of the language from that St Andrew’s House podium over the past eight months has suggested Scotland’s battle was somehow different from the one England was fighting and, as such, required tactical measures which could only be tailored in Edinburgh.

Here the SNP imposed alternative foreign travel restrictions to those decided in Downing Street, introduced a different tier system, chose other forms of words to get the public safety message across and even mocked the words chosen by their Westminster counterparts.

Week after week, and for reasons which became increasingly obvious as the weeks turned i nto months, our battle was portrayed as one headquartered in Edinburgh and, at best, running in parallel with that being waged from London.

Because they could not help themselves, there were times when our Nationalist masters opined ‘we’ were faring better in ‘our’ battle than ‘they’ were – that the decision-making up here was sharper, the leadership more impressive.

The unmistakable undercurrent in every First Ministerial briefing I watched was that we were witnessing a small nation on top of its game, making all the right decisions f or all t he best r easons whatever blundering may going on down south. It was, of course, a fiction – spun in a crisis for political purposes.

The truth, neatly encapsulated in that Daily Mail splash headline, is we were always in this together. British people went into this together, weathered the same hardships, experienced the same anguish, confronted the same fears.

A year on, come the spring, we will l eave the battle together thanks to a vaccine sourced at a UK Government level for all Britons.

There maybe little acknowledgement of this from Scotland’s First Minister and protector in chief.

It would never do to give oxygen to the sentiment that there may be the odd fringe benefit in belonging to a larger, more significant state which, just occasionally, gets things done on our behalf.

Gratitude

Expect no public displays of gratitude from St Andrew’s House, then, for the Westminster Government which we are repeatedly told does not stand up for Scotland.

But let me record my own gratitude here. I thank Scotl and’s l ucky stars f or i ts continuing good fortune in belonging to a Union that can still get things done well and fast in the face of adversity.

In this, perhaps the greatest national challenge the United Kingdom has faced since the Second World War, I shudder to think where Scotland would be without its Union partners. Not rolling out a Covid-19 vaccine as early as Tuesday, that is for certain.

When we come to look back on an awful year, many of us will surely mark this week as the turning point, a moment of rediscovered confidence and of rejoicing in achievements won together by working together.

And I suspect, in the cold light of day, the Nationalist posturing s o marked in Scotland’s response to the coronavirus – that determination to do things differently if only in service to our pretensions to i ndependence – will be viewed as a significant contributory factor to 2020’s awfulness.

Next year will be brighter. The vaccination I look forward to most eagerly is my father’s. Of the people closest to me, his will come first.

After him, it is my 23-yearold daughter I would soonest see inoculated.

Five days a week she takes the train from Glasgow to a secondary school in South Lanarkshire for a teacher training placement. There she stands in a classroom before children from up to 30 households and mingles with harassed staff for several hours before getting on the train.

Me? I drive a car and, for the moment at least, work from home. I daresay I can hold out a few more months while those more frequently exposed to danger are protected.

And, while she may belong t o my g e nerati on a nd, technically, would be due to receive the vaccine around the same time as me, I hope Miss Sturgeon is among the early recipients, too.

It would be good for its uptake among Scots to see our national leader getting this shot in the arm. It would also give her a quiet moment in her day to reflect on why the vaccine is happening.