Failure after failure ... 10 brutal reasons why Swinney & Co have to go NOW!
THE SNP has been in power for 19 years, almost two decades of rank incompetence, abject failure, divisive policies driven by ideological zealotry, secrecy and untold millions wasted with nothing to show for it. Here, we examine some of the most egregious failures and blunders of the Nationalists’ time in government.
From the shambolic failure of the ferries scandal, the divisive push to impose gender ideology and the shameful state of the NHS to the amateurish blundering of putting the Greens in charge of delivering a bottle return scheme and the run-down state of the country’s roads, this list is an embarrassing indictment of a party not fit to run Scotland.
1. THE ‘NAMED PERSON’ SCHEME
One of the SNP’s ‘government knows best’ initiatives, it was a sinister scheme to appoint state guardians to all children, even those still in the womb.
After a failed attempt to create a code of practice compliant with a court ruling, Deputy First Minister John Swinney announced the scheme was dead in 2019. The Scottish Government racked up legal costs totalling around £500,000.
2. SLEAZE SCANDALS
From Derek Mackay’s creepy texts to a teenage boy, to former SNP council leader Jordan Linden being jailed for 18 months for multiple sex crimes, the scandals keep coming. In 2019, the Scottish Government paid out more than £500,000 in legal expenses to Alex Salmond over its flawed inquiry into sexual harassment claims.
3. REFERENDUM GAMBIT
In 2019, Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs she planned to hold a referendum before the 2021 Holyrood election. But this was rejected by the UK
Government before it was even requested, and in 2020, the UK Supreme Court ruled the Scottish parliament lacked the authority to hold a referendum without UK Government consent. The Scottish Government spent £222,869 on legal fees to be told this.
4. THE ATTAINMENT GAP
In 2015 Nicola Sturgeon said she wanted to be judged on her record and that she aimed to ‘close the attainment gap completely’. That record turned out to be a pretty dire one, with the latest figures showing the disparity between secondary school leavers from affluent and deprived areas going on to ‘positive destinations’ sitting at its widest since 2020.
5. GENDER RECOGNITION ACT
Another hugely controversial law that caused the most societal division since the 2014 independence referendum.
Concerns about biological men being allowed access to single-sex spaces were waved away in the name of progress.
The UK Government later blocked the Bill. The issue came to a head when rapist Adam Graham called himself Isla Bryson and ended up in a female-only jail.
6. THE GREENS AND THE BOTTLE DEPOSIT SCHEME DEBACLE
Making Lorna Slater a minister almost seemed like a deliberate act of self-sabotage. The SNP appointed Ms Slater Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy, and Biodiversity. Within three years the inevitable happened and the public were left with a £186million bill for a bottle deposit scheme that collapsed before it even got going.
The scheme was scrapped after the UK Government declined a request for an exclusion from the Internal Market Act.
7. ROADS
The SNP has faced intense criticism and acknowledged failures in meeting its 2011 pledge to dual the A9 road between Inverness and Perth by 2025.
A promise to fully dual the A96 from Inverness to Aberdeen by 2030 was abandoned in 2024, and analysis by the Scottish Tories says the SNP has managed to rack up 115 years’ worth of delays across various key infrastructure projects.
8. THE STATE OF THE NHS
There does not seem to be one part of the NHS that has improved under the SNP.
Around 750,000 people are on waiting lists, delayed discharge cost 720,000 bed days in 2024/25 and almost three-quarters of GPs complain of excessive workloads. Add to this the scandal engulfing the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow and the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital, which have been plagued by infection risks and construction issues.
At the inquiry into the QEUH, health board chiefs admitted that infections caused by water contamination were linked to the deaths of children.
9. DRUG DEATHS
Suspected drug deaths soared by 8 per cent last year as Scotland remained the drugs death capital of Europe for the eighth year in a row. The SNP has also been criticised for funding The Thistle – a ‘heroin shooting gallery’ in Glasgow.
10. FERRIES
Perhaps the most farcical failure of the SNP’s time in government is the failure to provide working ferries for island communities. The construction of two major ferries, MV Glen Sannox and MV Glen Rosa, at Ferguson Marine has been marred by more than five years of delays and costs increasing from roughly £97million to over £400million.