Sturgeon’s stepping stones

It seems to me that there is a gap between presentation – very, very good presentation – and the reality. When it comes to Coronavirus data, when it comes to education, when it comes to the Alex Salmond issue. There is a gap between how you present yourself – very, very effectively – and what’s really been going on in Scotland.

Andrew Marr, questioning Nicola Sturgeon – 29th November, 2020

Not long after Nicola Sturgeon made the promise of a (UK funded) £500-pound tax-free bonus to all NHS staff at the annual SNP rally, the real intent of her words was made clear. 

Thanking NHS staff for their service was secondary; her primary goal was to manufacture grievance against the UK government, yet again, with the absurd claim that the UK Government, which is providing the funds, should exempt the payment from taxation. 

In using health workers as pawns in her constitutional game, she broke the most fundamental ethical rule — Kant’s Formula of Humanity — on which countless faiths and systems of government have been based: it is wrong to use people as a means to an end.

So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.’

Immanuel Kant, 1785

The move fell flat within hours, as opposition parties, the public and experts called her out, and in many cases even presented her with ways to make good on her promise. 

Sturgeon used the bravery of our frontline medical workers to score a cheap political point,  forgetting the equally heroic struggles of the countless individuals who work tirelessly every day to maintain our standards of living and our way of life: the cleaning staff; lorry drivers; supermarket workers; police; fire and rescue services; the armed forces and many more. All forgotten by the SNP as they play their tired tune of constitutional grievance. 

It has become abundantly clear that the SNP treat all of the residents of these islands as little more than stepping stones for their narcissistic obsessions. For us in Scotland, we are simply voters to be agitated. People in the other home countries are simply to be antagonised to the extent that they want shot of us, simply to shut her up. 

The SNP do not care for us, nor for them. They only care for their own power, through separatism, and maintaining and promoting their lies and fairy tales, and fantasies of building statues to themselves in their dreamy Utopia.

The SNP are a broken, yet predictable, record whose sole track is that of endless circular reasoning. Regardless of the question, the answer is independence. Solve the pandemic and its catastrophic economic and social fall out: independence. Tackle the climate crisis: only after independence. Fix housing, jobs, education, healthcare: yes, but only after independence. 

While Rome burns, they spend their time playing imaginary fiddles. There isn’t a problem in Scotland that they don’t already have the power to fix, but they cannot be seen to let Devolution succeed. And so they must break it, and break us along with it. 

For far too long, the SNP have treated those who oppose them, and even those who support them, with utter contempt, displaying all of the worst traits of political elitism and detached arrogance, which they say they are fighting against. They are determined to follow in the footsteps of the last party who held the “commanding heights” of the Scottish electorate. This is the pride that comes before the very well-deserved fall. 

With Sturgeon and The SNP it is always style and never substance. Their pledge for green investment and sustainable jobs: Failed. Their forays into shipbuilding, once the pride of Scotland: Failed. Their promise of a working Test and Trace system: Failed. Their promise to care for the most vulnerable: Failed. Their promise to provide our children with a fair future: Failed. 

Each of these policies was launched with great fanfare, with a capacity for style for which we must give them their due credit. Still, each, in turn, showed a catastrophic lack of substance as they collapsed around us, taking our livelihoods, futures and security along with them. 

The SNP have broken the most fundamental commandment, never to use people as a means to an end; they have sacrificed us on the altars of their ego. So, I ask anyone considering supporting them and their objectives: Are you happy being used as Sturgeon’s stepping stones?

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