WITH great poise and grace, which even her most vociferous opponents could not fail to notice, the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon has held a daily briefing almost every day of the lockdown thus far. The briefings have been streamed live on Youtube and on BBC. Well, on BBC that is until it’s time for the weather where your living room is.

Compare that to the conveyor belt of UK Cabinet ministers who glide into a wood-panelled room to face the flat-screen television with all its flat-screened questions. Watching a parade of weasel-worded ministers taking turns to shirk responsibility for their individual and collective failures while offering up non-apology apologies to their sacrificial key workers has been repulsive.

What’s that you say? The Cabinet ministers are only there in place of the Prime Minister while he recovers from coronavirus? Then perhaps the Prime Minister should not have been so cavalier in his attitude towards the novel coronavirus. For it wasn’t that long ago that Boris Johnson, puffed up like the proverbial peacock, was boasting that he was in and around hospital wards shaking hands with patients suffering from the effects of the coronavirus. These people had Covid-19 Mr Johnson not HIV. Political grandstanding was the last thing you needed to do at the beginning of this pandemic, not the first. Come to think of it, by all accounts your negligent politicking very nearly was the last thing that you did.

Still, pointing out the ultra-failings of the UK Government to its ultra-sycophants is a waste of good lockdown Netflix time. Political commentator Emily Hewertson tweeted: “Boris has supported the nation in every way possible. Now, it’s time for the nation to support him.” No individual needs show support for the Prime Minister. Why? He has no individual responsibility for his actions or for his inactions. And that’s the real reason for the daily “Who’s behind the podium today?” show.

Based on collective responsibility, UK Government ministers have their very own personal get out of jail free card. Collective responsibility of the UK Cabinet is a convention whereby the government as a whole is held accountable for the actions and decisions taken on behalf of the government by individual Cabinet ministers. And that’s why we have had everybody from Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, to Grant Shapps the Cabinet Minister for the Northern Powerhouse (the what?) fronting a press briefing.

Everyone is now waiting with bated breath wondering when it will be the turn of the UK Minister without Portfolio or perhaps even the Minister Without a Paddle to hold the daily briefing.

Mark Saunders
Port Glasgow

THERE is great comfort to be had from seeing our First Minister serene in her current role of catastrophe management with her measured competence day in, day out convincing us that she is acting in our best interests. She is undoubtedly a skilled operator in her ability to create a sense of unity in adversity and a comfort which helps us buy into forthcoming less palatable infringements of civil liberties in the pursuit of controlling the transmission and minimising broader societal harms in health and economics.

It’s a mysterious twist of fate that sees Ian Duncan Smith, George Osborne and the Daily Telegraph all standing in her corner. Unfortunately, however, trouble undoubtedly lies ahead.

An exasperated Michel Barnier is reported as suggesting that the UK is running down the clock in post-Brexit talks. Needless to say it was a claim swiftly denied by Whitehall.

In Whitehall we have the abomination of Dominic Cummings, the anti-Christ of the democratic process, participating in the Government’s supposedly independent and secret Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) while his delinquent master is yet again missing in action.

In other news we have the Blackford/MacNeil spat about the when and wherefore of indyref2. While not mentioning the gold standard Section 30 variety, Blackford did acknowledge that the UK “in its entirety, is immersed in a constitutional crisis” as a result of Brexit.

Wake up Blackford for I fear you are sitting too close to the screen. We are a matter of weeks before the concrete sets around the EU No Deal. You need to advise our FM, distracted as she is by the maelstrom of the pandemic, that we need clear water on the independence front now as comparisons are inevitable with Iceland, Norway, New Zealand and Denmark – small countries with a different approach and different outcomes to Covid-19.

Johnson’s mess needs fixing and the best fix, however implausible it might be, is a government of National Unity embracing Keir Starmer. After all he needs to get himself and the Labour Party some profile. What better way than to be a key player at the heart of government? If there is to be such a scenario you can also bet that Starmer can be relied on to support a UK Constitution Bill ushered in with emergency powers to cloak the looming Brexit debacle and Cummings and co can equally be relied on to shaft him later when he’s fulfilled his purpose.

Our FM failed in her promise that we wouldn’t be dragged out of the EU against our will having unsuccessfully spent too much political capital trying to save the UK from itself.

Democracy yes but enough of reasonableness in pursuit of our national interest. Skullduggery is the only way Westminster operates.

When you see the country’s Chief of the Defence Staff appear on a public forum not in the uniform of a staff officer but his battle-ready camouflage fatigues talking openly about the work of the 77th Brigade, the phrase “May we live in interesting times” becomes even more portentous.

Iain Bruce ​
Nairn