A jaded coterie of the dim and deluded... Scots deserve better

Drug deaths crisis has exposed the dearth of talent and ideas in the SNP, Tory leader warns

WE all knew what was coming, but when the figures were announced detailing Scotland’s annual drugs deaths on Tuesday morning there was still a palpable sense of shock.

There it was in black and white, our sense of foreboding realised – 1,264 Scots had been killed by drugs in a year.

From every perspective, the numbers are shameful. They reveal a record toll after six consecutive annual rises and the worst since records began in 1996. They reconfirm Scotland’s drugs death rate as the highest in Europe by a considerable margin and more than three times higher than the other UK nations.

While the pandemic has made us become almost numbed to counting deaths in the thousands, let us remember that every single one of those lives prematurely cut short by drugs was someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister, mum or dad.

Carnage

For this to be revealed on the same day my wife and I shared the news we’re expecting a new addition to our own family brought it home to me.

Once my shock over the drugs deaths had dissipated, what’s left is anger but also a profound determination that those responsible for this carnage, and with the power to remedy it, can no longer be allowed to hide away or make excuses.

I am, of course, referring to the First Minister and her jaded coterie of SNP ministers who after 13 years in government are bereft of ideas and in some cases worryingly out of their depth.

At the Scottish parliament on Tuesday, the issue was debated. Yet Nicola Sturgeon and her health minister, Jeane Freeman, were missing.

There is a pattern to this. Nicola Sturgeon revels in the self- styled role of mother of the nation; most obviously during her televised daily briefings, which usually generate more heat than light.

It is only when confronted with a scandal such as this that she decides to push others to the fore. She may still be smarting from her experience last year when Peter Smith of ITV News quizzed her over that previous record of 1,187 drugs deaths.

Having being confronted with the facts and challenged over her failings, she had nothing to say of substance – certainly not anything that would assure a grieving family.

The usual nominee when Sturgeon goes into hiding is her beleaguered deputy John Swinney but the human shield on Tuesday was the rarelyseen SNP public health minister Joe FitzPatrick. He is rarely seen for a reason.

To say his performance in the Holyrood chamber was like watching a fish out of water – wide-eyed, flailing and gasping for breath – would be disrespectful to fish.

The photo of a 53-year- old government minister scrutinising a scrawled note on the palm of his hand like a dim schoolboy became an instant meme and would be comical were this not so serious.

Then there was his chaotic performance on STV’s Scotland Tonight. Viewers of a sensitive disposition should have been warned to look away.

Yet Sturgeon wants us to believe FitzPatrick has the verve and ability to tackle the drugs epidemic blighting every community in Scotland and killing in the thousands.

The Scottish Conservatives have proposed real action, with the most i mportant measure being to urgently reverse the SNP’s devastating cuts to rehabilitation beds.

We spoke with Annemarie Ward of the drugs charity Favor Scotland who shares our concern about drugs consumption rooms not being the ‘silver bullet’ some believe.

Annemarie sent FitzPatrick a report containing 23 recommendations from those who have lost loved ones. Delivered a year ago, they have largely been ignored.

Slapstick

Instead, what do we get from the SNP in response to this public health emergency? A disappearing First Minister, a slapstick public health minister and plenty of talk but precious little action.

Perhaps this should be no great surprise. We know that running the country with a modicum of competence is not the Nationalist’s priority.

Instead of asking how they can improve the nation, they stoke grievance and seek division. Their motivation is the blind pursuit of Scotland being inflicted with another divisive referendum.

A pandemic has done nothing to temper this destructive obsession. The results of 13 years of this madness are there for all to see.

Our once world-leading education and justice systems have been betrayed.

Businesses are treated as a nuisance i nstead of t he nation’s lifeblood.

Infrastructure projects such as the empty new Sick Kids’ hospital in Edinburgh become embarrassing disasters.

For the SNP, however, their own abject and growing catalogue of incompetence can always be blamed on the UK Government, no matter how dishonest the accusation.

Truth

This week we saw them attempt their well-practised confidence trick in relation to the rising drugs deaths. Never mind the truth, which is these have happened on the SNP’s watch. It was not the UK Government that cut millions of pounds of rehab funding.

Sturgeon and her ministers have the tools to act but instead all they do is attempt to shift the blame on the Westminster bogeyman.

Surely – if they tried being honest – even their dimmest of politicians and all but their most deluded of disciples would not buy this nonsense.

Perhaps Sturgeon f eels i mpervious to cri t i ci s m, emboldened by polls which suggest she is untouchable.

Stick FitzPatrick out front to take a kicking, and sainted Sturgeon can be resurrected in time for her next Covid show on the BBC.

Such hubris is often the precursor to an almighty fall. But whatever Sturgeon’s political calculations, the drugs crisis has served to expose a dearth of talent and ideas in her shabby SNP administration.

While some political rivals are calling for FitzPatrick’s resignation, I believe that would be a token gesture and one which would do nothing to alleviate the death toll.

What’s clear is the time for talking is over. There is a real anger in communities. In the days since statisticians issued the drugs death data, more people have died.

Scotland deserves better as a matter of urgency and the starting point is to realise only the Scottish Conservatives can stand up to the SNP.

Only we have the people, the ideas and the determination to provide a genuine alternative after the 13-year ordeal of grievance government.