Obsessional SNP has to start representing every Scottish voter

IT makes perfect sense for the Scottish Government to have a role on the international stage.

Scottish companies should have support at the highest level, with Ministers promoting their goods and services around the world as well as selling the benefits of Scotland as a tourism destination.

But it seems the SNP has decided, instead, to dedicate its overseas activities to the promotion of its separatist agenda.

External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson is alleged to have passed himself off as Scotland’s Foreign Secretary during overseas visits. Troublingly, Mr Robertson has been promoting Scottish independence on trips which should have no party-political dimension.

Conservative peer Malcolm Offord has described how, during a meeting in Iceland, Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir explained that Mr Robertson had told her of the ‘oppressed people of Scotland’. Lord Offord went on to say that she had, following her meeting with Mr Robertson, been left with the impression that independence enjoyed the support of a majority of Scots. The

SNP is, of course, entitled to campaign for Scottish independence but Scottish Government Ministers are not entitled to do so at taxpayers’ expense during foreign trips which are supposed to benefit every Scot, including the pro-UK majority.

The SNP Government has already set aside £20 million for a referendum it has no authority to run. This further abuse of taxpayers’ money in support of its constitutional obsession is yet more evidence of the arrogance with which the SNP governs.

When he travels the world, Mr Robertson should represent every Scot, not just the minority who share his separatist beliefs.

Labour’s schools plan is damaging

THE Labour Party’s education policy is damaging to the nation. It is one of several good reasons for discontented Tories to reject any suggestion that they might lend their votes to Sir Keir Starmer as a protest against their own party’s failures.

Labour likes to please the party’s class-war Left by making rude noises about private schools. Yet despite having been in power for much of the post-war period, it has never significantly curbed private education.

Far from it. Labour’s biggest single education policy, the abolition of state grammar schools, was a huge shot in the arm for fee-paying schools.

These had been failing by comparison with state grammars. But as the grammars disappeared from most of the country, Britain’s independent schools welcomed thousands of new customers. These were parents so discontented with low standards at the new comprehensives that they were prepared to pay through the nose to do better. Now Sir Keir is threatening to impose VAT on independent schools south of the Border, a ferocious use of the tax system. This would not punish the rich, but it would hurt those who have in many cases sacrificed luxuries because they think education is more important. The plan is simply crowd-pleasing.

And now we learn that Sir Keir has been playing the elaborate Game of Homes, by which socialists publicly opposed to privileged private schools wangle their children into exceptional state schools. This is privilege too. For in this way they can retain their Left-wing purity, but without suffering the low-quality education which many users of the more normal parts of the state system still endure.

When Labour’s elite are content to send their children to ordinary state schools we will know that they truly believe in their own education policies.

Until then, Labour should not punish the strivers who seek to escape what Labour’s own spin doctor Alastair Campbell once called the Bog Standard Comprehensives of Britain.