Leadership race for FM spot is ‘troubling’
I believe my Scottish Labour colleague Jackie Baillie summed it up best when she said, “it would be comedy gold if it wasn’t so serious”.
It was, indeed, funny to watch Kate Forbes say that continuing the status quo of Sturgeon’s SNP government – a government Forbes has served in since 2018 – by voting for Humza Yousaf would be “accepting mediocrity”.
It was funny to see Yousaf ’s selfproclaimed experience as a minister be torn down by Forbes, delivering blow after blow to his reputation with lines that could have come straight out of opposition press offices.
It was funny to hear leadership hopeful Ash Regan come across as if all of her ideas had been worked out on the back of a napkin five minutes before she said them.
Yet the serious and, indeed, sad aspect of this leadership contest is that the record of this SNP government impacts real people living here in Renfrewshire.
In both their introductory monologues and in the moments they cross examined each other, all three candidates revealed what the SNP have always tried to hide – that it is a party filled with division and incompetence.
Most of the debate was dominated by the topic of independence – the goal that all three candidates, despite their differences, prioritise above all else.
It is this focus and obsession on achieving another referendum that makes the prospect of any of them as First Minister so troubling – at least for anyone who cares about seeing our NHS, social care and education improve.
Just in the last week, Forbes has claimed that if she becomes First Minister she would deliver £15 per hour for care workers.
This sudden willingness to improve the pay of social care workers took me and my Labour colleagues by surprise given we have been calling for that pay rise for just under two years and during that time we’ve been told repeatedly by Forbes and other SNP government ministers like Yousaf that it was unrealistic and unaffordable.
Bizarrely, not only is Forbes using Scottish Labour attack lines against her colleagues, she is now supporting Scottish Labour policies because she thinks it will help her chances of becoming First Minister.
To anyone who is quite taken by her sudden change of heart towards social care worker pay, I would urge caution.
Forbes, Regan and Yousaf have all been part of a wider 15 years that has failed Scotland. It is their government that has allowed the crisis in our NHS start and gradually worsen.
It is their government that has allowed social care to become undervalued, underpaid and lacking a strong workforce.
It is their government that has let the education attainment gap widen despite vowing to do the opposite.
The people who have presided over crisis and chaos cannot be taken seriously as candidates who can fix it.
They are promising the world right now but everyone should know, after 15 years of the SNP, what those promises are worth.