She’s a messiah who turns the wine to water
IF Unionists are happy to have Ruth Davidson back in frontline politics, the same cannot be said of Nicola Sturgeon. She bristles at every interrogative the sort-ofbut-not-really leader of the Scottish Conservatives poses.
At First Minister’s Questions, Davidson raised the revelation that elderly patients were transferred to care homes after testing positive for Covid-19. She wanted to know if and when ministers knew about it. ‘Scottish Government ministers do not know the individual clinical decisions taken in cases of patients who are being discharged,’ Sturgeon replied.
An answer, but not one that addressed the specifics of Davidson’s query.
She tried again, eliciting the same reply: ‘Ministers are not involved in the clinical decision making about residents being admitted to care homes.’
Richard Leonard fished in the same waters by asking for the total number of infected patients involved, but Sturgeon pivoted to Public Health Scotland, which has been tasked with compiling figures from every health board.
It seemed like a straightforward question and Sturgeon’s evasions will have raised a few eyebrows. More typical fare came with Davidson complaining that police were investigating a nursing home Covid death in Drumchapel but ‘the question of how the disease got into the home is not part of the police remit’.
‘I am genuinely not sure whether Ruth Davidson has just suggested that it is for me to tell the police what they should investigate and how they should investigate it,’ Sturgeon riposted.
There was a long Covid update and already some of the newly restored freedoms are at risk of being rolled back. House parties will be broken up if they cram too many people into a small space or if neighbours report more than one UB40 track per hour.
Following the bar-based cluster in Aberdeen, local authorities will be given the power to shut down pubs. Sturgeon’s followers already consider her the messiah, so turning wine into water is close enough. Tory MSP Alexander Stewart yaps out syllables like a West Highland Terrier with a postie in his sights: ‘To ASK the First Minister what action the scottish government is taking in response to police scotland’s reported budget overspend during the covid-19 crisis.’ sturgeon boasted her government had given the bobbies an extra £60million this year. You’d struggle to remake an episode of Dixon of Dock Green for that nowadays.
MEANWHILE, Patrick Harvie appeared from home with a wine rack on the wall behind him. If he made it through all 84 minutes of FMQs without cracking open at least one of them, I can only admire his fortitude.
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko will be shaking in his jackboots after an intervention by John Mason on the protests in Minsk. It’s the reinforcements the pro-democracy parties were waiting for. Sturgeon joined him in saying the recent elections shouldn’t be recognised because they were likely rigged. Lukashenko won 80 per cent of the vote. Sturgeon no doubt hopes it’s a record he’ll hold till next May.
She was then pressed on her government’s refusal to be fully open with the Salmond inquiry. She accused Murdo Fraser of issuing a ‘party political press release’ and suggested he had already made his mind up. Quite. We can’t let an inquiry chaired by a Nationalist MSP into how the SNP government investigated the previous SNP First Minister become tainted by party politics.