The SNP: a scandal too far?
As he prepared his budget statement last Tuesday night, Derek Mackay must have felt confident about his future in Scottish politics. At 42, the finance minister was regarded as a shoo-in to follow Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP, and a possible future First Minister. Yet “less than 24 hours later, Mackay was gone”, said Alan Cochrane in The Daily Telegraph – “forced to resign in ignominy” after being confronted by the revelation that he’d been sending “suggestive” text messages to a 16-year-old boy he’d never met. Mackay had bombarded the boy with 270 messages, in which he’d complimented him on his looks (calling him “really cute”) and invited him to a reception at Holyrood. With police looking into whether a crime has been committed, Mackay will be lucky to keep his seat. But the scandal won’t just affect him: it could have major ramifications for the SNP and, by extension, the future of the Union.
Mackay’s disgrace could “hardly have come at a worse time” for Sturgeon, said Alex Massie in The Sunday Times. Next month, Alex Salmond, her predecessor, goes on trial on serious sexual assault charges. And the list of woes afflicting her government is a long one. Scotland’s schools have slipped down the international rankings; its rate of drug deaths is the worst in the developed world; its A&E waiting times have hit a record high; and the CalMac ferry contract fiasco continues – the boats are now more than £100m over budget and two years late. Put all of this together and there is a real sense that the government has run its course. But that doesn’t mean it will lose next year’s election. Neither Labour nor the Tories are in a position to make much headway in the firmly Remain country; and in any case, for a large swathe of Scottish voters, the independence cause is so vital, they’ll keep voting SNP, regardless of its poor performance in office.
But for the Nats, there is a problem, said The Guardian: Sturgeon knows that any move to independence must be indisputably legal if Scotland is to have a hope of re-entering the EU – and Boris Johnson has ruled out a second referendum. She hopes that a big SNP win next year will force him into a U-turn, but for a party that is tired after 13 years in office, the long game is risky. But so is pushing for an early referendum, said Gerald Warner on Reaction. life. Having left the EU, with no guarantee of re-admission, there’s a very good chance Scots would baulk at crashing out of the UK too. They “enjoy twisting the British lion’s tail”, but now, more than ever, they will be asking themselves “what kind of people are governing them”.