THERE’S a new book out by Ian Pattison, the writer behind Rab C Nesbitt, called Burning Down the House, which imagines life in a newly independent Scotland.
As someone who hopes he’s a moderate, considered Yes voter, that’s the one thing I don’t want: Scotland metaphorically burning down the house on the path to independence. If independence ever comes it has to be done safely, calmly – no Scexit for me, thanks. No patriotism in place of pragmatism.
Forging an independent Scotland, if or when it ever happens, should be a creative not destructive exercise by the people, based around enhancing the best of what we now have and building on it – not wilfully or negligently trashing our possessions as we rush for the door.
I’m drawn to independence as over the 50 years of my life Westminster has proven itself repeatedly to be a rotten failure. I’m not a nationalist. I hate nationalism of all stripes – British and Scottish. I don’t “believe” in independence for the fundamentalist sake of independence. If I thought Britain could be improved I’d vote No. Experience, however, teaches me that the UK is irreparable. So with no alternative to improvement, independence offers one possible road to a better future.
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That is what’s key for me: I support independence because I believe it can create a better country, especially for those at the bottom of the pile. My Yes vote is contingent upon that. If it came to pass that I considered either a Yes vote, or the party leading the campaign for Yes, as inimical to the interests of the weakest in society, then I’d quite simply abstain in any future referendum or even vote No.
So the SNP is currently putting my beliefs up for auction. I long ago cooled on the notion that the SNP really spoke for people like me: progressives on the left of the political spectrum. It is, in truth, a ruthlessly centrist party with no real principles, trying to fan its umbrella wide enough to accrue as many voters as possible in pursuit of a majority in a future referendum.
That, however, leaves certain matters, which voters like me consider inviolable, at risk – one of which is the NHS. Health and education have, in particular, suffered hard under SNP rule. The party has no real capacity for domestic policy. It speaks great things, but does little.
We’ve just learned that there’s a policy of NHS privatisation by stealth under way in Scotland. Private hospitals are being invited to bid for provision of surgery normally carried out by the Scottish NHS. Some 1,500 procedures are up for grabs including heart, cancer and brain surgery.
Now there’s a lot to consider here without being hasty. Chiefly, our health service is a catastrophe. GPs tell me in private conversation that the current Health Secretary, Humza Yousaf, is completely out of his depth. Waiting lists and ambulance delays are literally killing people.
Private hospitals are being invited to bid for provision of surgery normally carried out by the Scottish NHS
However, the SNP is allowed some mitigation here – clearly, we’re in the middle of a pandemic which has disrupted health services across the planet.
But there’s more going on, though – and it stinks, to be frank. The SNP is playing the Scottish people for fools. Crucially, the chaos caused by Boris Johnson not only allows so much SNP failure to fly under the radar, it also acts as a fake comparator. SNP loyalists point slavishly to Westminster whenever the Scottish Government is shamed, saying: “Well, look south, we aren’t as bad as that clown in Number 10.” True. But just because Westminster is corrupt and broken that’s no excuse for Edinburgh failure.
The mass support for independence also offers a now well-worn get out of jail free card for the SNP. I accept I’m in a minority of Yes voters. My support for independence doesn’t translate into unquestioning support – or indeed any support – for the party of government. In fact, rather than making me less critical of the SNP, backing independence makes me more critical. If I want this country to go it alone, then isn’t it incumbent on me to expect the very best from the party which claims to represent that ambition?
Most independence supporters, however, are now well practised in the art of cognitive dissonance and pretend that the SNP isn’t really a domestic failure because their dream is tied to that party’s fortunes. That’s a recipe for policy disaster – and anyone who allows such latitude to the SNP should be considered as personally culpable for the party’s failings. If you care about the party you claim you support, then keep the Government on its toes.
There was a certain irony at the weekend when John Swinney said the UK Government secretly wants to take back devolved powers. Unionist critics have every right to sneer and ask “well, what have you done with those powers?” and then point to the NHS and claims that a pathway to privatisation is being laid, just as secretly.
Read more: SNP’s thin-skinned sense of entitlement will be its undoing
There will be SNP loyalists who will say that using private healthcare services is simply a hard choice that needs to be taken amid Covid and pressure on the NHS. I’m afraid that’s not good enough. First, this blindly avoids the issue of SNP mismanagement of the NHS over years. Secondly, if the shoe was on the other foot – and a Labour or Tory government was accused of stealthily moving towards privatisation – no excuse would be accepted from these self-same people.
Thirdly, and more importantly, it also overlooks a raft of SNP promises that privatisation would never happen. In 2012, then Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said the future of the NHS in Scotland could only be secured by independence. Back then, I believed her. She promised: “Let me say loudly and clearly. Not here. Now now. Not ever. As long as we are in charge, there will be no privatisation of the NHS in Scotland.”
Put simply, you’ve been lied to, and the party which wants to lead the nation into independence has proved, through careless disregard for the health service, that it is incapable of such an historic job.
The cause of independence is not worth the destruction of the NHS under the SNP.
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