These are strange times politically. The key players on the political scene that we do have are shining out. But the real news or the opportunity to flag it still sits very snugly under the cloak of Covid-19.
One of the political heavyweights that we should perhaps be paying a lot more attention to than we are is SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon who really does have to be flagged for how effortlessly she manages to turn every opportunity she is given to make it all about her.
When I say her, I of course mean making it all about Scottish ‘Independence’. Because frankly, that’s all the SNP Leader is about.
Whilst the viewing figures are now dictating the demise of the daily briefings from No10 – albeit only from air over the weekends, the public interest in the Lockdown and Social Distancing is clearly waning, it wasn’t always the same.
Indeed, it was notable from the start that once the SNP Leader had managed to create enough media attention to get a seat at meetings with Boris in No10, she then deliberately went out of her way to abuse the trust or protocol of the arrangement and make unilateral announcements that to the untrained eye looked like real leadership whilst she was deliberately making every attempt to show up the actual PM.
It would be a challenge for anyone to criticise Sturgeon for trying to big herself up into looking like a world statesman when that’s pretty much what all of the current political class does.
However, the track record of the SNP beyond their collective attempts to reflect any interest in their own unfolding legacy in Scotland by criticising everyone and anything else is something to behold.
Indeed, if the SNPs track record with leading the Devolved Administration was showing their form of Government as a beacon of integrity, diligence and putting public need first, we might all struggle to be critical of anything that they do.
All we see instead is the passing of the buck when there is a problem, without fail carefully placed in the vein of Westminster does it worse than we do or something along those lines. Whilst anything good that happens is immediately owned as if the Westminster Parliament’s signature on the UK Taxpayer’s Chequebook has zero to do with anything that the Scottish Parliament can do.
Devolution was of course the bastard child of the EU, regrettably administered, re-wrapped and rolled-out by Tony Blair and the 1997-2010 New Labour crew.
All this form of localisation achieved was to take more power away from the Scottish people and place it in the hands of yet another set of politicians who are in it for themselves.
Just like Blair and the Remain-obsessives who are doing all they can to make the Coronavirus Pandemic yet another re-run of the question of Brexit and Leaving the EU, the SNP see their best chances of glory being aligned not with the destiny of their own people, not even with Independence from the UK or anyone else, but with that of the EU.
Adam Tugwell 