The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Public's trust in Scottish Government down to 65%
HIGH: Confidence in ministers still at record level, according to survey
Trust in Nicola Sturgeon’s administration has fallen in the wake of the EU referendum, according to an official survey.
But the public has more than twice as much faith in Scottish ministers than in their UK counterparts.
The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey reveals that 65% of respondents trusted the SNP Government to act in Scotland’s best interests in 2016, which is down from 73% on the previous year.
Only a quarter of Scots had confidence in the Conservative Government, up slightly on 23% in 2015.
It also found that more than half (54%) thought the economy had weakened in the past year, compared with 34% in 2015.
Of those, 35% attributed this to UK Government policy, 18% attributed it to Scottish Government policy and 37% to “some other reason”.
The Scottish Government approval figure is the fourth highest recorded since devolution in 1999.
But the drop on last year, coupled with the SNP’s failure to retain its Holyrood majority, will lead to claims the party’s popularity is on the wane.
Derek Mackay, Scotland’s finance secretary, said the figures are a major endorsement of the SNP administration.
“It’s clear that the people of Scotland trust the Scottish Government to listen to their views, and act fairly and in their best interests,” he said.
The 73% record figure in 2015 came on the back of a surge in SNP support, having secured a remarkable 56 out of 59 seats in Westminster.
The independent survey was conducted in the months after the EU referendum, between July and December.
For the first time in the survey’s history, more people thought the Scottish Government had the most influence in running the country, rather than the UK administration.
Some 42% believed most power lay with Scottish ministers, compared with 41% at UK level, 8% at EU and 5% with councils.
In keeping with previous years, threequarters said Holyrood should hold the most influence in running the country.
A UK Government spokeswoman said: “People expect the Scottish Government to concentrate on the day job, and, most pressingly, deal with Scotland’s lagging economy.
“There is a worrying gap between the Scottish and UK economies, and the Scottish Government needs to use its extensive powers to help Scotland prosper.”
Even casual observers of British politics will fail to be surprised that the level of trust in which the public holds political parties is falling. The country has suffered a near-unprecedented period of upheaval at the ballot box in the past half-decade, including Scottish and general elections and referendums on Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom and Britain’s place in the European Union.
Political spin and twisted statistics are nothing new and they have been increasingly supplanted by the sinister rise of “post-truth” politics and “alternative facts” – “lying”, for those who like to tell it how it is.
Of course, not all politicians are guilty of offering up halftruths and blatant bias where the public want bald facts.
But it has become all too easy for those in power to abuse their position by offering up their own version of reality and ignoring that anything which fails to confirm it.
A slogan on the side of a bus is preferable to a wellreasoned, fact-based argument and apparently we are fed up of hearing from “experts”.
As a result, fewer than a quarter of Scots have confidence in the Westminster Government.
And fewer than two thirds trust the Scottish Government, currently focused on securing a second independence referendum, to act in the country’s best interests.
It is time for those in power to do some hard thinking and plain speaking.