Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 27 January 2021
How about a plan to give loved ones access to care homes as our most vulnerable people are vaccinated? Again, we have had no answer and no plan.
Education was supposed to be the Scottish Government’s priority.
“Judge me on my record”
said Nicola Sturgeon at the beginning of this parliamentary session. It did not take long to ditch the flagship education bill. We see inequalities and the attainment gap continue to grow, but there has been no task force and no 11-point plan on that.
The SNP’s calls for independence are a smokescreen to distract the people of Scotland from its woeful track record in government. I heard Michael Russell bullishly suggest that the SNP should hold its own referendum and dare the UK Government to challenge it in court. I would have thought that the inside of a courtroom would be the last place that the Scottish Government would want to see, given recent events. We saw the ill-fated “the state is watching you” named persons scheme defeated in court. Of course, the SNP’s former leader and First Minister Alex Salmond has dragged it through the courts towards another embarrassing defeat, and that saga rumbles on. However, at least the SNP will be on first-name terms with all the court officials by now.
The SNP knows that it cannot defend its domestic record. It also knows that it has no cards to play, so it cries for independence in the hope that that will galvanise its support and deflect attention from its appalling record in government. The irony is that the people it pretends to represent with its reckless policy are the very ones whom it will let down the most. Nicola Sturgeon, Mike Russell et al know that there will not be a referendum in 2021, because to spend time and money on anything other than post-Covid recovery would be unthinkable. After the election they will spin up their next cock-and-bull story—anything to get them through the election. The more the SNP pushes that agenda, the less it acts like a Government and the more it acts like a protest group. Scotland deserves and needs so much better.
16:10