SNP’s devolution deceit

HOLD the front page! Nicola Sturgeon has announced that Scotland needs ‘the real and permanent alternative’ of ‘independence’. I certainly didn’t expect that.

The woman whose party complained in 2014 about the pro-UK side’s ‘scaremongering’ resorts to… scaremongering. She predicts the UK Government will ‘shift even further to the Right’, with detrimental effects on tax, public services and support for families.

In most statements and complaints from the SNP, it seems as if the party and its members have not heard of devolution – the entrusting to an administration in Edinburgh of a broad variety of governmental responsibilities, including the vital ones of education, health, transport, housing and policing.

Indeed, it seems as if the SNP tries to keep devolution a secret from its supporters, many of whom appear to be ignorant of what it involves. Thus, Miss Sturgeon ignores, in her public utterances, the powers that she already has on tax, public services and support for families. These are considerable.

Miss Sturgeon is a past mistress of the art of pretending that she leads an insurgent opposition to HM Government, when after 15 years she leads the establishment in Scotland. She is in permanent opposition to the UK and all its works.

The shifting of the census timetable, and its risible outcome, are an example of that.

But her party has been in power for a long time, and it needs to take some responsibility for the dire results of its 15 years in office. Miss Sturgeon’s constant blaming of Westminster for all our woes has worn very thin.

JILL STEPHENSON, Edinburgh.