ONCE again Boris Johnson made a trip north of the Border to save his precious Union.
We have all seen this film before. The heroic Boris Johnson and his trusty sidekick Alister Jack fly to Scotland seeking those precious Unionist votes.
But there’s a twist – every time he comes here, support for Scottish independence goes up, and he returns to London licking his wounds and still seeking his happily ever after.
At first the PM visited the (SNP built) Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, I can only assume he chose to go there due to the abundant supply of fridges that he could choose from to hide in if he was asked any difficult questions.
It may be because he is one of the most unpopular prime ministers in Scotland in recent living memory. Despite Michael Gove doing his best to gaslight and downright patronise Scottish voters by claiming that “Boris Johnson is very popular in Scotland”, he could not be further away from the truth.
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I am not sure by what metric Gove was using to determine this as overwhelmingly people in Scotland have been dissatisfied with the way the Prime Minister has gone about his job. Polls suggest satisfaction rates in Scotland with the PM are down as low as negative 62%.
Whilst in Scotland Boris Johnson described holding another independence referendum as “pointless”.
If anything has been proven to be pointless, it is his visits to Scotland for a stage-managed photo op under the veil of fighting the pandemic.
Where he should have been is meeting with real people, real business owners who have been devastated by his Tory Government’s hard Brexit and crippling policies which exploit the most vulnerable in society.
He should have paid a visit to Scotland’s seafood exporters who have been sold down the river by the Tories and are now facing closure as they are snowed under with mountains of red tape, increased costs and fish rotting in the back of lorries.
He should have spoken to families and the 20,000 Scottish children he will dive deeper into poverty when his government cuts the vital £20 uplift to Universal Credit at a time when they need it most.
He should have spoken to the thousands of people in Scotland who no longer want to be part of the Union he is flogging.
The Prime Minister’s visit was a tale of two governments, the UK Government, led by Boris Johnson was on another crusade to deny the people of Scotland their right to choose.
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Whereas in Edinburgh, the SNP Scottish Government’s Finance Secretary Kate Forbes was delivering one of the most important budgets in the history of the Scottish Parliament.
She outlined how the Scottish Government will support Scotland’s recovery from the pandemic, prioritising the nation’s health whilst also providing vital lifelines for businesses who are going through possibly the toughest time they have ever faced.
Very soon though, Scotland will have a choice as to which government it wants to lead its post-pandemic future. Does it want to be led by Boris Johnson who politicises vaccines in the name of the United Kingdom or a government in Scotland that is focused on the recovery from the pandemic and how we can kickstart industry once again and create green, sustainable jobs.
No matter how many times Boris Johnson travels north of the Border and tells the people of Scotland that he will decide their future, it does not change the fact that the future of Scotland will lie in the hands of the people of Scotland. Not him, or any other democracy denying prime minister, can change that.
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