Coronavirus: Nicola Sturgeon and Jackson Carlaw show leadership required – leader comment

Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw defends Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘measured and appropriate’ briefings on the disease, setting an example wewould all do well to follow.
Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw dismissed an attack on Nicola Sturgeon by an anonymous UK Government source (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw dismissed an attack on Nicola Sturgeon by an anonymous UK Government source (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)
Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw dismissed an attack on Nicola Sturgeon by an anonymous UK Government source (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

For anyone in any doubt, the first Covid-19 coronavirus death in Scotland should bring home how serious this disease truly is. It will almost certainly not be the last.

Yesterday saw the global death toll pass 5,000 as the World Health Organisation continued to plead with world leaders to take tougher action. “Do not just let this fire burn,” said WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

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In Scotland and across the UK, public events like football matches have been cancelled and the response to the outbreak, if not the disease itself, is starting to impact on many people’s daily lives. And there may be more decisions taken in the coming days and weeks that will further interfere with our everyday routine.

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If that happens, we all need to realise such steps are being taken for good reason – to try to stop the spread of a deadly disease – and so we must accept a degree of inconvenience. And, ideally, we should do so calmly, respectfully and, if we can muster it, cheerfully.

An example of the kind of change in our thinking that needs to happen came after a UK Government source shamefully attempted to play politics with the outbreak by describing Nicola Sturgeon as a “total disgrace” because she had held a press conference shortly before Boris Johnson did the same.

In normal times, this kind of bickering and political points-scoring is sort of acceptable. In our current situation, it is not. And up stepped Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw to make that crystal clear. Both the Prime Minister and First Minister, he said, had “convened relevant, measured and appropriate media conferences updating respective populations on coronavirus and immediate consequential actions. This is neither a competition nor a subject for unnecessary squabbling by others.”

A Scottish Conservative leader sticking up for an SNP leader – and slapping down an anonymous voice emanating from his own party’s Government in Westminster – is an unusual event. Few in Scotland need to be told that.

But some may need to make a similar change in their mindset if Covid-19 continues to spread and the restrictions are increased, perhaps to something like those imposed in Italy, where 1,000 people have died.

So if you find you are unable to go somewhere you want to go, do not try to circumvent the controls. We are truly in this together and it is by working together that we will emerge from this outbreak in the least painful way.