SNP has to focus on rebuilding Scotland

NICOLA Sturgeon’s election victory is indisputable – but her party missed the majority it craved.

Her goal of outright control of the Scottish parliament remains unfulfilled, and now it’s time to move on.

Not just for her party, but for the whole of Scotland, now split down the middle over the divisive question of independence.

In the midst of such division, it’s vital that she governs in all of our interests.

During the campaign, the First Minister conceded she and her ministers ‘took our eye off the ball’ on spiralling drug deaths.

But it’s a criticism that could be levelled at a host of other policy failures, from botched educational reform to management of the NHS.

We simply can’t afford for the SNP to be distracted yet again by its mission to split apart the UK.

After all, Miss Sturgeon said ahead of last Thursday’s poll that a vote for the SNP wasn’t a vote for separatism.

Now she has ratcheted up her rhetoric about a wildcat referendum to appease her support base – but she knows such a radical path would prove counterproductive.

This dilemma sums up the SNP’s position. It won, and after 14 years that’s no mean feat – but it may turn out to be something of a Pyrrhic victory.

To placate her increasingly restive grassroots activists, Miss Sturgeon will have to keep up the talk of forging ahead with a referendum.

But pursuing this litigious course would turn the SNP into international pariahs.

And doubtless many of those voters who believed Miss Sturgeon’s assurances that this election wasn’t about independence would desert the party.

We should also remember that the First Minister said before the election that she wouldn’t work with Alex Salmond’s failed Alba Party – yet she’s happy to join forces with the Greens to achieve a ‘proindependence majority’.

That’s a nightmarish prospect, given the price the Greens would exact for their support – most likely in the form of punitive ‘wealth taxes’.

Yet even their most diehard supporters would have to question whether Miss Sturgeon or her fellow ministers really want another divisive poll at this time.

It became clear as she campaigned for reelection that the SNP leader didn’t know the answers to key unresolved questions about currency and the Border – or didn’t want to reveal them.

Instead, we were told that we would be informed in due course of the SNP’s prospectus for independence.

That’s an extraordinary pitch from a party that is asking us to take such a monumental leap into the dark.

Ironically, it might well suit Miss Sturgeon to put the referendum on the backburner – until her party can come up with more plausible answers.

The need for strong opposition has never been greater, and it’s a task that falls largely to Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross. He was criticised for his unrelenting focus on preventing an SNP majority, but it was a strategy that paid dividends – and he deserves praise for making it work.

His determination will be needed in the months and years to come to ensure the new administration is held to account.

Mr Ross will do so in the knowledge that there’s no appetite, even among many SNP voters, for another referendum while Covid recovery remains the top priority.

And support for independence has fallen to its lowest level for two years – only around 42 per cent say they would vote for it, compared to 45 per cent in 2014.

The SNP must focus on rebuilding Scotland after the nightmare of coronavirus – and get back to the day job of governing after 14 years of constitutional chaos and failure.