Anti-Englishness is the SNP’s raison d’etre
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Evidence at the Covid Inquiry in Edinburgh this week has revealed that the SNP, especially under former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, appeared more interested in having a row with the UK Government and hurling insults about prime minister Boris Johnson than in doing its best for the people it represents.
They acted under a cloak of secrecy where she and other ministers and officials deleted vital messages about their controversial Covid policies.
The answers elicited this week confirmed that the party’s principal driving force, indeed raison d’être, is the anti-English attitude that has guided much of its behaviour and policies.
Anti-Englishness is a theme that runs through all of the SNP’s works. Devolution and the restitution of a Scottish parliament a quarter of century ago were supposed to end the feeling that all of Scotland’s supposed ills could be laid at London’s doors. But, once the SNP became the governing party, the die was cast. Henceforth there would be the correct way of doing things – the Scottish way – and the wrong way, the English way.
According to senior witnesses this anti-English view crystallised with the Covid pandemic.
One of the UK’s leading epidemiologists, Professor Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University, suggested an almost obsessive view prevalent in the Scottish Government was that much of Covid in Scotland came from England.
He cited the SNP’s focus on travel restrictions with England and its belief that the dominant strain of the virus in Scotland came from England, when it had in fact originated in Spain. Yet SNP discussions remained focused on England and the supposed threat from English holidaymakers.
There was support in Scottish government circles for closing the English border early on. At a later stage in the pandemic, Ms Sturgeon did try to close the border but Police Scotland refused to set up roadblocks.
In the week that the anniversary of Robert Burns’s birthday is celebrated it may be worth recalling one of his most famous lines – his wish that we could “see ourselves as others see us”.
Nationalists may not wish for such a power, but with Ms Sturgeon due to give evidence next week, luckily for us the Covid Inquiry is already showing us the real face of the SNP.
