This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.
The Covid Years remain a yawning, dark chasm, waiting to swallow up politicians who held office during the pandemic.
If the UK or Scottish inquiries find that any minister – or their advisors – north or south of the border acted in ways that the public deems unworthy, duplicitous, stupid or dangerous, then they’re finished.
It’s not just their careers that will be trashed, but their reputations in the history books. Wrongdoers and failures will be damned forever.
Matters are already looking bleak for the SNP. The Scottish Government has failed to hand over messages to the UK’s Covid Inquiry, despite promising to cooperate.
Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, says there is evidence that “informal communications” including WhatsApp messages were being used by “key decision-makers” to “discuss the nature of the decisions which the Scottish Government might have to take”.
He also said “very few messages… appear to have been retained”. Then it emerged that messages sent by Jason Leitch, Scotland’s national clinical director, had been deleted.
What is going on here? Has the SNP any idea just how rotten this looks? Covid was ground-zero for endless, baseless conspiracies. The Scottish Government is laying the foundations for allegations of perhaps a conspiracy of the grandest, worst sort.
This is either stupidity of the highest order, an utter disregard for democracy and the public’s right to know, or something much darker. Nobody can be blamed for reaching extremely troubling conclusions. The SNP has brought this upon itself.
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The Scottish Covid Inquiry has heard extremely distressing details about the treatment of elderly residents in care homes. On just this one issue, how will bereaved families ever feel that they have been listened to, or that the truth can come out with transparency, given the scandalous details around messages?
Even if all materials are found, recovered, and handed over, the SNP has created circumstances in which it is fully understandable that their words will not be believed.
This is a truly offensive, egregious and dangerous dereliction of duty.
Yet we haven’t even reached the darkest heart of the Scottish Government’s response to Covid yet: the decision to transfer untested elderly patients from hospitals into care homes.
We know that at least 1,300 such transfers took place at the start of the pandemic. Covid was implicated in at least 4,295 care home deaths, with 1899 – 44% – occurring within the first 12 weeks of the pandemic.
This was a decision which beggars belief. How could anyone have thought this a safe move? A child could see the risk. So why did this happen? These events need to be interrogated ruthlessly by the Scottish inquiry.
As we know, Nicola Sturgeon has stood down from government. Some may say that’s rather convenient. However, Sturgeon could be on a Pacific island and the buck would still stop with her to this day. She was in power. She called the shots.
The then Health Secretary Jeane Freeman also stood down in 2021 and didn’t run for reelection. Humza Yousaf, now our First Minister, became Health Secretary. He was also in cabinet throughout the pandemic.
Read Neil every Friday in the Unspun newsletter.
So the public is now looking at what seems to be dreadful and fatal failings by the Scottish Government when it comes to care homes. Yet simultaneously, we learn that messages haven’t been handed over, or in some cases deleted.
As the inquiries continue, the SNP may discover that the pain it’s endured since Sturgeon cut and run is nothing compared to the horrors it could find itself facing if the truth about Covid ever emerges into full sight. The final reckoning may be its ultimate ruination.
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