When she dropped the A-word, I thought I’d misheard
IHAVE never won the lottery, penned a bestseller or seen a shooting star but I’ve watched Nicola Sturgeon apologise, and that gives me bragging rights over any millionaire novelist stargazer. When the First Minister dropped the A-word, during her Covid statement at Holyrood, I initially thought I had misheard her. ‘Antagonise’, maybe. ‘Anathematise’, possibly. ‘Aggrandise’, mostly likely. But apologise? Isn’t that something for mere mortals – and Westminster Tories? It’s not that ‘sorry’ isn’t in the First Minister’s vocabulary; it’s just that she seemed to assume the Oxford English Dictionary had included the word with her opponents in mind. Nevertheless, she said it. After updating MSPs on the latest coronavirus statistics and the merging of the green and amber lists for international travel, Sturgeon turned to the app mishap. ‘I am well aware that initially many people found it extremely difficult to use the app,’ she conceded, adding that ‘many people found the app was unable to locate their vaccination record’ and that the problems were ‘especially acute over Thursday and Friday’. She went on to admit that this had ‘caused extreme frustration’ for members of the public, business owners and event organisers, especially those who had planned to use the weekend to test their passport-checking procedures. Then it came: ‘I apologise for that’. Jeepers. Don’t worry, though. The contrition was not quite as heartfelt as it seemed. The snafu, she explained, was not down to the app but an error in the NHS system that meant information was not transferred quickly enough. Douglas Ross was unsparing in his criticism of the launch failure, but he mewled like a pussycat compared to Anas Sarwar. The Labour leader had acquired some gumption from an unknown source and went in for an absolute mauling. His line of questioning was dogged and the dog was Cujo. ‘It was a predictable disaster and it is the consequence of an arrogant government forcing through its illthought-through plans despite concerns from the public, public health experts and businesses,’ he growled. ‘The promised app was rushed out at the last minute and crashed just minutes later.’
The First Minister re-upped her practised humility: ‘I do not consider the experience of the launch of the app last week to be remotely satisfactory.’
Sarwar wasn’t done yet. He noted that thousands were due to descend on Glasgow for COP26, yet ‘they will not require a vaccination passport in order to attend’. They would only need to show a negative result from a lateral flow test – the same measure he had suggested instead of vaccine passports only to be slapped down by Sturgeon.
‘You are making this up as you go along,’ he charged.
There was some evasive waffle about ‘other mitigations’ for COP26 attendees and wanting the conference to be a success, but it was unsalvageable. Her carefully crafted apology had been torn to shreds by a sceptical, unforgiving opponent. More please, Mr Sarwar.
ASMALL but telling moment. Jim Fairlie, a Nationalist MSP elected in May and destined, I sense, to become a Holyrood Sketch regular, fumed that the Scottish Tories – ‘the supposed party of business’ – should protest Westminster’s 7.5 per cent VAT hike.
Sturgeon used it as an opportunity for a dig at the party across the chamber: ‘I am not convinced their counterparts in London pay any attention to them.’
What she failed to do was dispute the characterisation of the Tories as the party of business, ‘supposed’ or otherwise. Alex Salmond would have grabbed the opportunity to declare the SNP the true party of business in Scotland, but she lacks her mentor’s instincts, or interest, when it comes to industry. Presented an open goal, she wasn’t even on the pitch.
Like I say, telling.