A FEW weeks ago I was at First Minister’s Questions with a trade union deputation. I have to say it was a pretty poor session. The atmosphere in the chamber was flat and beyond lacklustre.

I said to colleagues afterwards that Nicola Sturgeon’s body language, oratory and general demeanour were one of someone whose time had passed. She was unconvincingly going through the motions. Whilst I expected her to stand down sometime over the next 18 months her sudden resignation caught many, including me, by surprise.

In politics, governments and political leaders normally stand or fall on their record of delivery. In healthy democracies parties and leaders who make endless bad decisions, show appalling levels of incompetence, repeatedly waste public money and fail to take responsibility for their actions are usually run out of office — and deservedly so.

But in recent years Scottish politics has bucked this trend despite the SNP government’s decision-making at times seemingly taking its lead from Sid James and the cast of the Carry On films.

As I write this we are in the midst of a rolling series of teacher’s strikes, a dispute over pay that has gone on for over a year. The Education Secretary Shirley Anne Sommerville lacks the power, authority or gravitas to deliver a settlement. Decision-making in Sturgeon’s government lay with one person: her. Cabinet government was an illusion.

At the same time, the attainment gap between pupils living in the poorest communities and those in the wealthiest grew. Scotland has fallen down the international attainment tables and threats to teacher numbers from yet another round of council cuts threaten to make things worse. Education was supposed to be the First Minister’s priority.

In the midst of an energy crisis, the offshore wind licence sell-off is one of the worst decisions made by any government in the history of devolution. Scotland, having already flogged its onshore capacity to the private sector, sold off the rights to offshore wind to the very private companies that are ripping off consumers and posting record profits.

I cannot process why foreign multinationals and venture capitalists were handed this klondyke when public and community ownership could have seen surpluses invested in services whilst driving down bills for consumers and businesses.

In health, we have so many crises it is hard to keep up; a mental health crisis, a dental crisis, a recruitment crisis, a waiting times crisis, a cancer waiting times crisis, a GP crisis and a 24 per cent fall in student nurse applications, to name but a few.

Add to this record levels of homelessness, soaring hunger and malnutrition, the worst drugs deaths rates in Europe – and the disaster facing communities, especially in working-class areas, is clear for all to see. Sturgeon was health secretary, deputy first minister or first minister as these crises unfolded.

In social care, hundreds of thousands of hospital bed days are lost due to delayed discharge. Patients are left in hospital for weeks and months on end at a cost of around £4,000 per bed per week because there is no care home place or care at home services available to support them. And I will never forgive or forget the catastrophic decision to discharge untested elderly citizens into care homes leaving Covid to take its grim toll.

Meanwhile, elderly people who have sold their council houses to go into care are robbed of their modest life savings as private care home operators use them as a cash cow to compensate for the underfunding of council-funded places.

The proposed National Care Service does not seek to do anything about this scandal and is a disaster waiting to happen. You will struggle to find a single social care patient, family member, worker, civil servant, trade unionist or stakeholder group who thinks the service as proposed is a good idea. Its days are well and truly numbered.

Across local government, the Scottish government has once more handed councillors the choice of whether services die from a bullet through the head or a knife through the heart.

The services we all take for granted are the ones up for the closures or cuts — libraries, swimming pools, sports centres, music lessons, theatres, bin collections, Christmas lights, community transport and so on.
The SNP-Green Party Glasgow City Council was considering the loss of hundreds of teachers, this was ruled out by the SNP-Green Scottish government. So much for the autonomy of local government.

Can you imagine the outcry had Westminster overruled a Scottish government policy decision? It would have provoked accusations of a power grab, an “attack on the devolution settlement” and so on. It appears Sturgeon did not hold herself to the same standards she expected from others.

And of course, we have the ongoing ferries debacle, eye-watering sums of taxpayer cash poured into a black hole for ferries that are seven years late and hundreds of millions over budget.

Add this the failure to meet climate targets, a huge backlog of court cases, the delay in dualling the A9, the treatment of Ukrainian refugees and the inability to even bring in a scheme to return ginger bottles and we see a government that by any measure is utterly hopeless at delivering public services.

And therein lies the conundrum — because despite all of this, Sturgeon and her party are still riding high in the polls. Her skill in delivering convincing-sounding rhetoric completely unmatched by the reality of service delivery was unparalleled.

Sturgeon was undoubtedly a skilled political leader and communicator but her record is one of failing public services, squandered opportunities and a country divided.