With Eeyore as First Minister, it’s safe to say no one is overly upbeat
IF nothing else, it was a good day for the Scots vernacular. Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane told Nicola Sturgeon businesses were ‘scunnered’ with her handling of the pandemic, while Alex Cole-Hamilton decried her evidentiary basis for vaccine passports as ‘mince’.
It was disappointing, therefore, when Anas Sarwar described ventilation systems in schools as merely inadequate and not ‘pure bowfin, byraway’.
The First Minister was back in her role as Cassandra. Scotland, she warned, was ‘entering a period when, understandably, people will be socialising and mixing more than normal’. However, she added, ‘we must continue to take care and we must not allow ourselves to be lulled into any false sense of security’.
With Eeyore for a First Minister, it’s safe to say no one’s getting overly upbeat. Enthusiasm’s about the only thing that’s not infectious at the moment.
Sturgeon confirmed that her vaccine passport regime would now accept negative lateral flow tests as an alternative to certification. Dr Gulhane accused the Scottish Government of ‘making it up as they go along’. If only they were that organised. From the outset of the pandemic, the SNP’s ever-shifting policies have carried the disjointed scrawl of S1 geography homework done on the bus.
Now, if the new policy of letting people choose between a negative test result and a Covid passport sounds familiar, that’s because Anas Sarwar has been banging on about it for ages. The First Minister said adopting his position would have been ‘dangerous’. ‘One of the primary objectives’ of the scheme was ‘to drive up vaccination rates’. Allowing testing from the start would have ‘undermined the central primary objective of the scheme’.
Hmmm. If permitting a negative test as alternative proof would have undermined the rollout of the second dose, why aren’t ministers worried about having the same effect on the booster programme? It’s almost as if the Scottish Government is changing one of its flagship Covid policies just so the First Minister can save face.
Still, political game-playing is at least comprehensible, unlike Sturgeon’s second go at explaining herself. She told Labour’s Katy Clark: ‘Yes, there are points at which we want to maximise vaccination, which is what we’ve done to drive up rates in the early part of the certification scheme, but that didn’t mean we were telling people not to test with LFD tests; both are important.’
The best I could make of this verbal porridge is that telling people to get vaccinated doesn’t tell them not to get tested, except when letting them provide proof of a test result discourages them from getting vaccinated. You could create your own vaccine with the brain power required to make head or tail of that.
‘As well as vaccination, we are asking everyone to take regular lateral flow tests,’ Sturgeon explained. ‘We have been asking
people to do this routinely twice a week.’ I struggle to remember which of my 37 colours of wheelie bin is the one for milk cartons; performing twice-weekly diagnostic procedures is well above my pay grade.
Ministers had mulled over extending the scheme to include ‘indoor theatres, cinemas and other hospitality venues’. However, the Cabinet had decided – which is to say, Sturgeon had told them they had decided – to keep the pictures accessible to everyone. It was good news for owners of cinemas and terrible news for owners of small children, who will now have to take them to see Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The decision had been ‘a very, very finely balanced’ one and Sturgeon kept chucking in the phrase ‘at this stage’, to keep the tension roiling away. If this First Minister business doesn’t work out, she has a bright future as a scriptwriter on The Walking Dead.
Another term she used more than once was ‘proportionate’. This is one of the legal tests of whether she is using her pandemic powers lawfully. Frankly, the Scottish Government has been taken to court more than enough in recent years.