#5 She deprived 300,000 children of their new hospital
Edinburgh's new Sick Children's Hospital was supposed to open at the end of 2012. You didn’t misread that: it's just one example of the level of incompetence we must live with under the SNP in Scotland.
The project has been so delayed it has even outlived three previous health secretaries who were looking after it, making Jeane Freeman the fourth. I hear you all breath sighs of relief at that...
The tender document stated the ventilation system had to be able to change the air in critical care areas four times per hour. Health standards dictate it should be 10 air changes per hour. This mistake alone, with the revisionism of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the importance of this ‘technicality’ to life, will cost £16m to rectify and delay the opening further.
Well over 300,000 children attending A&E have been denied access to the hospital their parents were promised, over the duration of this delay so far.
The SNP say the hospital is due to open in November, but you’ll forgive me for saying, “aye, and so did Guy Fawkes…”
#4 She increased taxes – and raised LESS revenue for public services
Although this is about Nicola’s failures, we really need to remind you, reader, that Derek Mackay was the Finance Secretary who increased tax rates - and actually received £941m less in revenues than forecasted.
Nicola’s failing here was appointing a Finance Secretary who didn’t know what the Laffer Curve effect is. If she chose better, perhaps Scotland would have more tax revenues to invest in the public services that have decimated over the past 13 years and Scotland wouldn’t be the most highly taxed part of the United Kingdom to live in.
This wasn’t the first time either. When the Scottish replacement for stamp duty was introduced – the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax – that and the newly devolved Landfill Tax raised £38m less than forecast, again because Scottish rates were set at a more punitive level than elsewhere in the UK.
#3 She handed welfare BACK to the UK Parliament
When the Scottish Parliament eventually assumes its additional powers over welfare and benefits (assuming it’s not deferred by the Nationalists, again), the creation of the system to deal with those new benefits will have taken a full nine years to deliver. Nine years to setup a system to deal with what amounts to 15% of total welfare spend in Scotland.
That’s only seven and a half years longer than the SNP claimed it would take to setup all the mechanisms and accoutrement that come with ripping Scotland out of the UK, such as embassies, agreement on sharing broadcasting, infrastructure, border controls, etc.
Listening to the SNP’s rhetoric, they make no bones about making grievance with the UK Parliament that welfare and benefits in the UK insufficient and unfairly penalise Scotland.
Well, handing back the levers of power which allow you to change something you perceive to be wrong – twice – gets this one into the top five Hall of Nicola’s Shame.
#2 She failed to heal Scotland
The campaign by the Nationalists to split up our country began in 2011. It hasn’t stopped, despite the result being delivered in 2014 which shows the majority of Scotland is anti-Nationalist.
Since then, despite the Conservatives winning an outright majority in 2015 with only the one seat in Scotland back then, the Brexit result in 2016, Boris becoming PM in 2019 when he’s not as popular as his predecessors in Scotland, then Brexit actually happening in 2020, the polls have remained stubbornly against the Nationalists.
This settled will of the people of Scotland against Nationalism has resulted in growing tensions and frustration on that side of the debate. Hardly a weekend went by before COVID-19 that a Scottish town or city wasn’t afflicted by Nationalists wandering around hurling abuse at people with Union flags, calling for people they deem to be ‘scum’ to get out of their own country, or even one I saw personally in Perth, calling for ‘England: Get Out of Scotland’
Studies have shown increases of racism and sectarianism in Scotland, and the dialogue used by Nicola herself has contributed to this, rather than attempting to heal the deep wounds which exist now in Scottish society.
#1 'Judge me on Education'
The mother of all failures. Screw up on education, and you break the economy, you break social cohesion, and you break law and order. This was the test Nicola proudly set herself on becoming First Minister. So let’s check her report card…
No other policy area has seen such deep rooted and systemic change at the hands of the SNP than the education system in Scotland, and they’ve made a pig's ear of it. After abolishing tuition fees, changing the curriculum, changing the exams, changing the measurements, by just about every metric you could muster, what was once the envy of the world is now a concealed, shameful little secret of failure and missed opportunity.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows Scottish educational standards are as askew as the tower this acronym was inspired by. Down in maths, down in science, fewer young people from deprived backgrounds getting to university than England (where they increased tuition fees let alone abolished them), employers desperately trying to plug the skills gap left by the SNP’s reformed education system.
The nation which proudly shaped the modern world through innovation and enterprise would attract scorn from the likes of Adam Smith, Alexander Fleming and James Watt.
Nicola said herself “judge me by my record on education” but she is forever removing Scotland from the measurements to do so, removing themselves from two international comparison surveys, and scrapping a number of domestic measurements here at home.
Well Nicola, we’ve looked at the evidence - consider yourself judged.