It’s time to come clean. For years now, I’ve been compiling a dossier on various tweets and announcements by the SNP, although no one knew I was doing it until I sat next to someone from the BBC the other night and blurted it out. What the dossier reveals is unavoidable: the SNP no longer aligns with our values and must therefore be removed. Exited. De-governmented.

I realise this interferes with the basic human right of Scotland’s party to be in charge of things, and that it will make it harder for the SNP to acquire another government, but the dossier does not lie. I’m also working on the assumption that my values are unquestionably the correct ones and that it’s therefore necessary to condemn and undermine anyone who does not share them. They’ve got it coming to them right?

If you still don’t believe me, let me present you with the latest evidence. You may remember that, back in 2020 during the pandemic, the Scottish Government banned alcohol on trains apparently to make it easier to stop the spread of the virus. They said the rule would be temporary but then announced last summer that by “temporary” what they meant was “permanent” and the policy would stay. This confirms one of the inevitables of politics: governments find it easy to make rules but hard to unmake them.

To make matters worse, it has now been revealed that, far from acting on the evidence when they decided to keep the ban, the Scottish Government was actually ignoring it: specifically advice from the British Transport Police and officials in Transport Scotland to relax the prohibition. The then transport minister Jenny Gilruth over-ruled them both, and it was decided the rule would stay (except for Mhairi “Tennents” Black, obviously).

It’s hard to know where to begin with this kind of stuff really, except that it self-evidently breaks the principle – call it a value if you like – that public policy should be based on evidence, not assertion. The Scottish Government appears to have shifted to the idea that the alcohol ban prevents anti-social behaviour but there’s no evidence it does. Get on any train to anywhere, from anywhere, last thing on a Friday and you’ll see it for yourself.

The other problem with the policy – and it’s obvious in other policies too – is it runs contrary to the cautious but sensible way many Scots do things. There’s a problem with some drunken people on trains no question, but it is disproportionate to remove a right that is mostly exercised without incident because someone occasionally abuses it (and this isn’t just me wanting to have a drink on a train when I want to, although it is a bit).

We should also be applying the same test of proportionality in other areas too. Is it proportionate, for example, to suddenly penalise people with older cars (usually poorer) rather than wait for the cars to get to the natural end of the lives? And is it proportionate to penalise people with gas boilers rather than people with heat pumps (usually richer) rather than phase out the gas boilers, again, when they get to the end of the lives? I would have thought imposing policies that hit the less well-off the most would have been contrary to the SNP’s values.

The same kind of muddle exists on alcohol. The Institute for Economic Affairs has just said there is no robust evidence in favour of a ban on alcohol advertising and yet it may happen. Public Health Scotland says minimum pricing has a limited impact on the most harmful drinkers and yet it may be extended. We also learned this week that there has been a drop in problem drinkers accessing alcohol treatment services. What exactly is it that the government is trying to do here?

Perhaps it would help if the SNP explained more clearly what their values actually are. Or how about they just base their policies on the most important value of all: common sense? Maybe that way we would introduce a bottle deposit scheme when the rest of the UK is doing it. Maybe that way we would target the policy on alcohol on the people who are struggling the most. And maybe that way we would end a disproportionate ban on alcohol and allow people to have a drink on the train when they want to. Let’s do that shall we?