It is vital we keep a close eye on the SNP’S civil war

NEIL Mackay comments that “many of Scotland’s leading political voices and their cheerleaders in the media ... obsess on the inner workings of the SNP while the country – and the world, evidently – falls to pieces around them” (“In these grim times, where is the vision for real change?”, The Herald, February 23) .

He laments the upsurge of job losses and notes: “During the recent snows, pictures emerged which should shame this country: images of 200 people queuing at a soup kitchen in Glasgow in freezing temperatures.”

While these awful events, and more like them, are fuelled in part by the pandemic, the responsibility for handling them lies at the doorstep of the Scottish Government, which, right now, and for the foreseeable future, is the SNP.

It is entirely right that the civil war inside the SNP should come under extensive media scrutiny. The media is the only lens under which the people can review the actions of those who rule. Once readers and viewers have sifted verifiable fact from opinion and spin, they have at least some idea of what’s going on.

To see those at or close to the top squabbling over personal power during a massive emergency is hardly building confidence for the future, a future that will most surely be influenced by the outcome. It should be remembered that the national decision-makers are, at the end of the day people, and that after the May election, with a likely SNP victory, those same individuals, quite likely the squabblers from the winning side, will be running the country.

It is therefore very much the duty of the media to keep a close eye on the party’s internal battle.

Jim Robertson,

East Kilbride.