Wee Ginger Dug: Tory silence should have us screaming for independence

As public anger grew at the apparent disregard of lockdown restrictions by the man who was responsible for drawing up the regulations that others have to abide by, members of the Government crawled out to take to the airwaves to insist that it was actually the public that was at fault for getting upset at a man who was just trying to protect his family.

It’s a bit like the Tories telling victims of mugging that it’s them who are in the wrong for criticising a poor unfortunate who was forced into robbery to feed his family. Only the Cabinet Ministers keep on telling the victims that they’re in the wrong even after it came to light that the mugger had plenty of cash in his bank account, but it was just more convenient to mug a passer-by than to go to the ATM.

Surprisingly enough, the Scottish Conservatives were nowhere to be seen in the media for most of the weekend. Well, I say “surprising”. That’s surprising in the same sense as – gosh the sun came up today. Isn’t that a surprise. Or – wow, isn’t it surprising that those fitba fans take their game really seriously. You know, as surprising as a Scottish Tory MSP making a bit of an idiot of himself on social media. That kind of surprising.

Only there were no Scottish Tories making idiots of themselves on social media. However, this doesn’t mean that the party wasn’t making an idiot of itself. Oh no. Let nothing come in the way of the Scottish Conservatives and their excellence at rank hypocrisy. Those same Scottish Tories who were plastered all over the Scottish press and airwaves like the inches thick make-up on a drag queen when it came to condemning the Scottish chief medical officer Caroline Calderwood for her breach of the lockdown rules were nowhere to be seen. They collectively suffered a complete failure of their usual harrumphing opinionating when it came to Dominic Cummings.

For all their sound and fury when it was an adviser to the Scottish Government who broke the rules, when it came to the chief adviser of their own Conservative Government in Westminster, you’d think that every single Scottish Tory’s mobile phone had mysteriously suffered a battery problem. Dr Calderwood travelled some 40 miles across the Forth to Fife.

She neither had symptoms of Covid-19 nor did anyone in her family, and none subsequently became ill. Dominic Cummings, on the other hand, travelled 260 miles with his wife, who did have the illness, and their small child. A short time later he also started to show symptoms.

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Are we really to believe that it’s possible to drive 260 miles with a small child in the car without having to take a toilet break? Which means other people were exposed to Dominic Cummings and his infection along the way.

His breach of the rules was far more serious than Catherine Calderwood’s, and that’s before we even get into the issue of him making the journey more than once and combining it with a trip out to Barnard Castle.

It beggars belief that the Scottish Conservatives had no opinion on Dominic Cummings’s transgressions. Unfortunately it doesn’t beggar belief that they hide whenever there is bad news for them. That same media which are very keen to give them broadcast time and column space when it comes to SNPbad appear quite happy to let them go to ground whenever there’s bad news for the British Government – and there’s been a lot of that recently.

If the Scottish media were as keen on publishing stories that are bad for the British Government as they are on SNPbad they would probably do a better job of fending off demands for independence, because we’d never see the Scottish Conservatives again.

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At every step along the way, the government of Boris Johnson has been characterised by arrogance and entitlement. That’s bad enough at the best of times, but it’s unforgivable when it’s combined with rank incompetence and an inability to do the most fundamental job demanded of any government – keeping its citizens safe from harm.

This epidemic has seen the UK suffer the highest death toll of any country in Europe, there has been one mis-step after another from the British Government. Its messaging has been confused, incoherent, and mistimed.

Yet not a single word of criticism, even constructive criticism, has been uttered by the Scottish Tories. It would appear that as far as they are concerned, the British Government’s handling of this crisis has been a model of British exceptionalism that the rest of the world would do well to learn from.

This is a party which rejects independence because, it tells us, it believes that Scotland is better off, better governed, and has more influence within the UK. Yet they never once speak up to defend Scotland or Scottish interests within the UK.

Instead, they act as a cheerleader for the Westminster Government in Scotland, and are terrified of any criticism of Westminster as the first step to independence. In doing so, they fail in their first duty as a so-called Unionist party, the duty to stand up for Scotland’s interests within the UK. And, in their failure to pursue them, the Scottish media make the same mistake.

The people of Scotland look at this and tell themselves that if it’s not going to be possible for Scotland to have its interests heard at a UK level, if those parties and organisations which are most vehement in their support for Scotland remaining within the UK are not willing to stand up for Scotland within the UK, then there’s little point in Scotland remaining a part of the UK.

It tells us that there’s only one way in which Scotland’s interests are going to be heard, and it’s not by remaining subject to Westminster and the arrogant incompetent entitlement of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings.