Big enough and smart enough

AFTER recent events Nicola Sturgeon might reflect on the UK senior minister who was asked by a new MP how he coped with facing the enemy every day. “That’s not the enemy,” the minister explained, indicating the benches across the floor, “that’s the Opposition. The enemy are behind me”.

Colin Forbes and John Dunlop (Letters, March 6) question the calibre of leaders or public servants. Both debates circulated during the 2014 referendum and bear further thought. A group of Edinburgh financial and business leaders hosted a well-oiled lunch to persuade would-be Yes voters of their folly. One tactic involved rubbishing the Scottish civil service, while also claiming to be patriotic Scots. In undermining public servants, however, the business leaders were by implication also denigrating the cohort of professionals, graduates or smart school-leavers working for their presumably wildlysuccessful companies. These same businesses have now been forcibly removed from a vast single market for their goods and services. Why? Because a Westminster cabal of elected politicians and unelected “advisors” led a mendacious campaign to vote Leave in a bigger country that then imposed its will on a smaller one. It is a historic error that Scotland’s public servants, and its voters, did not make.

During the pandemic civic Scotland revealed astonishing capacities to adapt “at pace” (the new buzz phrase). As with the smoking ban, or the profligate waste of plastic carrier bags, general compliance – with pandemic restrictions, with the work of local resilience teams – was immediately evident. A galaxy of brilliant academics, researchers and medics shone from our screens. We attended to every word from new household names: Jason Leitch, Linda Bauld, Devi Sridhar. We lapped up Zoomed specialist expertise in fields many of us didn’t even know existed. If Ms Sturgeon’s strategy required nuanced niche information, someone in Scotland had it.

As financial services experts roll up their sleeves in pristine inoculation booths will they be rubbishing the strength in depth of public and private sector teams who have developed, planned, co-ordinated, supplied, sterilised, secured, communicated, logged, managed and finally injected their life-saving vaccination in recordbreaking time? Presumably not. Trust Scotland: big enough, smart enough.

Dr Geraldine Prince,

North Berwick.