It’s time for change in Scotland
Humza Yousaf, the health secretary who delivered record long A&E wait times at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, won enough support from members to replace Nicola Sturgeon in an announcement yesterday.
However, let’s be clear, the leadership contest was a chaotic mess from start to finish – exposing the deepest divisions within the party.
And it is unlikely that the end of this contest will bring calm. Turbulent times lie ahead for the county and the SNP, too, as they try to figure out how to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable differences.
These candidates have spent weeks tearing lumps out of one another and undermining their own government’s record.
They have trashed Sturgeon’s legacy and shown that, despite voting together for every single measure in government, none of them have faith in the abilities of the other.
The contest demonstrated that even the SNP don’t trust the SNP anymore.
So, why then should the people of Scotland trust them?
This contest was brutal and revealing and proved that the Scottish Government have not just run out of steam, they’ve run out of ideas.
And far from being a party with progressive intentions, the only thing that binds the nationalists together is their obsession with independence. Even on that they don’t have a credible plan.
Scotland deserves better than this. It deserves a government focused on the people’s priorities, a government that will govern well, not a glorified campaign group.
A campaign group that has sat back as Scottish public services have crumbled on its own watch – and then told the long-suffering Scottish people that things can be better only if they vote for independence.
But their record over the last 16 years exposes this promise as a sham.
No public service institution is in a better state than when they first came to power in 2007.
Child poverty continues to grow.
One in seven Scots are on an NHS waiting list.
And life expectancy, the one true measure of how well a government is performing for its people, is on the decline. After years of rising under the last Labour government, the trend in life expectancy has begun to reverse.
An unforgiveable indictment of their failure.
I believe that a majority of people are fed up and bored by the SNP’s grievance politics as espoused by all leadership candidates.
We need fresh ideas for governing Scotland and for the people to have their say in an election.
And that’s especially important because none of these candidates have a mandate or moral authority to lead our country.
When people voted at the last Scottish Parliament elections, the message on the ballot read “Nicola Sturgeon for SNP First Minister”.
A new First Minister does not inherit that mandate.
The SNP were right to call for a General Election during the chaos of last year’s Tory Party internal divisions – but now they are denying people in Scotland that same choice on their new leader. They can’t have it both ways.
Let’s go to the country and let the people have their say on where Scotland goes next – in a direction of positive, reforming change for people with Labour or more protest, incompetence and failure from the SNP.
It’s time for change. It’s time for an election.