Nationalist rule has led to mess and mediocrity, says Merryn Somerset Webb
Nobody had a good word to say about Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf’s tenure when he announced his resignation earlier this week. There was some muttering about him meaning well, but nothing on anything doing well. Largely because there is nothing. The kind would say that the last few weeks’ disasters – caused by Yousaf falling out with his coalition partners, the Green Party, triggering a vote of no confidence – were not really his fault.
Nicola Sturgeon made the terrible decision to hitch the SNP’s political wagon to the Greens. Most of the awful policies their influence pushed – self-ID, the hate-crime bill, rent controls, badly managed bottle recycling – were under way long before he had the misfortune to replace Nicola Sturgeon. And the events that set in motion the arrests of both Nicola Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell (who until recently was chief executive of the SNP, something which anywhere else would have raised eyebrows rather earlier) can hardly be laid at his door.
Nonetheless, Yousaf has held high office in the SNP administration since 2012 and been in charge of transport, health and justice. He is far from blameless. Under the SNP, the once wonderful education system has been nastily watered down: the latest PISA report (a global study of 15-year-olds’ reading, mathematics and science skills) reveals a ten-year slide in standards. The NHS is in at least as much of a mess as that of the rest of the UK, which is saying something.
A&E times have soared, as have cancer waiting times. If you need an appointment with a consultant you will not get a letter telling you that you have one, but a letter telling you have entered a list for the waiting list. A tenth of the population is currently waiting. Life expectancy is falling. Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe.
The SNP has also conducted a relentlessly stupid experiment in bumping up Scottish taxes at the middle and the high end, despite the lack of any border with England. You now pay more tax in Scotland as soon as you earn £28,850 and very little less below it. It has put in place rent controls that have propelled rents to record highs and caused builders to pause build-to-let projects. It has spent £400m on ferries that haven’t yet seen water. Finally, it has made a lot of noise about climate policies and proceeded to do
