Sturgeon’s gift of the gab has sugared pill of Scotland’s woeful coronavirus record

Nicola Sturgeon spent much of July telling anyone who would listen that the prevalence of coronavirus in England was “five times” higher than in Scotland.

The figure was deployed to justify her refusal to rule out imposing quarantine on travellers from England, and a controversial move to set a Scotland-only policy on air bridges.

The day after she first made the claim, masked nationalists descended on the border near Berwick-uponTweed, shouting abuse at English “plague carriers”.

The wording on their banner was instructive: “Keep Scotland Covid Free”.

Ms Sturgeon’s “five times” claim later turned out to be as dodgy as the one on their bedsheet.

The UK statistics watchdog rebuked the Scottish Government for its use of misleading figures, saying the “un-caveated” comparison should never have been made. How did Ms Sturgeon respond? A mea culpa at Holyrood, where she managed to make the claim three times in one day?

Instead, she accused opposition politicians who dared challenge her of politicising the crisis. That day, she was named the world’s fifth most eloquent “world leader” alongside the likes of Angela Merkel.

Judges praised her for her straight talking.

Scottish unionists didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Scotland has not been “Covid free” since February. Early on, Ms Sturgeon took the decision to keep a major outbreak at a conference in Edinburgh from the Scottish public.

A kiltmaker who dressed delegates and a guide who took them on a walking tour across the city wondered whether they had unwittingly helped spread the virus across the capital.

According to the Office for National Statistics, Scotland had the thirdhighest rate of excess deaths in Europe by the end of May, behind only England and Spain.

In Scottish care homes, Covid-19 has been catastrophic. Almost half of

Covid-19 deaths registered have come in care homes, compared to under 30 per cent in England and Wales. When confronted with the disparity, Ms Sturgeon simply claimed the English figures must be wrong.

As Jamie Jenkins, a former head of health analysis at the ONS, said: “The main pitfall in comparing countries’ total Covid-19 deaths is that you are at the mercy of how each define and collect their own data. But to overcome this, focusing on excess deaths, which are the total number over the average, means you can remove such issues.

“You can do this and compare England and Scotland with the rest of Europe.

“The data shows England has seen the highest excess deaths in Europe through the pandemic with Scotland worse than any other country with the exception of Spain.”

A poll recently found Ms Sturgeon recorded an approval rating of +60 among Scots for her handling of the pandemic, with the Prime Minister on -39. The First Ministers of Wales and Northern Ireland must wonder where their plaudits are, given both have presided over better figures than Scotland.

Those who claim those impressive ratings are at least in part explained by Ms Sturgeon’s undisputed talent for communication, alongside her willingness to pick fights with London, might just have a point.

‘The main pitfall in comparing countries’ deaths is you are at the mercy of how each define their data’