Nicola Sturgeon being treated 'like royalty' at public's expense shows how out of touch she was with those struggling to make ends meet – Jackie Baillie

Official record of Nicola Sturgeon’s ministerial visit to Dublin in 2019 says travel and subsistence cost £100.98 – with no mention of the £1,605 credit card bill for private check-in and a chauffeur-driven car

The revelation that almost £10,000 of public funds was used to whisk former First MinisterNicola Sturgeon through airport VIP lanes is quite shocking. But then when you read that one of the meet-and-greet companies offering the services boasted it treated customers “like royalty”, it is not really surprising.

The company website says its services relieve the “stress” of going through airport procedures. That fits with the attitude and the arrogance of the former First Minister’s regime. The Tsarina of Scotland and her courtiers no doubt felt entitled to such treatment, away from the airport hoi-polloi.

Thanks to an information dump of almost 60,000 purchases, totalling £14 million on the government credit card over three years, we know just how cavalier the SNP is with your money, not just their own. Most of the items cover the kind of day-to-day expenditure expected of a large organisation. Those who work for large companies will be well used to the concept of an away day and team-building exercises.

But yoga classes, nail polish, driving theory tests, a pregnancy testing kit and £4,812 for hospitality and accommodation at Gleneagles Hotel? And all this during a cost-of-living crisis. Taxpayers will be hard-pressed to understand why this level of expenditure was necessary or allowed.

Then there were books ranging from six copies of a collection of Ms Sturgeon’s speeches and 21 copies of “How to Run a Government so that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy”. They clearly haven’t read that one. They even bought a copy of that fiction best-seller, their own government’s 2014 White Paper on independence. Presumably, it replaced a copy lost down the back of a sofa.

These vignettes speak to the hubris of a government which similtaneously felt itself to be in control of a nation’s destiny and hopelessly out of its depth. There are also items which cut directly to the rise and fall of the former First Minister.

They spend £24.99 on heel stoppers, rubber grips that stop high heels sinking into soft ground, for an event the First Minister attended in Berlin. If you were looking for a metaphor for the SNP’s poll ratings since the party was enveloped by a blue forensic tent then look no further.

The credit card statements do not match the published figures for these self-aggrandising international jaunts. Journalists have noted that the official record of Ms Sturgeon’s ministerial visit to Dublin in November 2019 shows it cost a mere £100.98 for travel and subsistence. There is no mention of the £1,605 credit card bill from Dublin Platinum Services for the private check-in and chauffeur-driven trip to the aircraft. We would not know about the Sturgeon government’s largesse unless the information had mistakenly been released, that’s the real cover-up.

After the usual chorus of online cybernats complaining bitterly about being caught out, the current First Minister accepted there would have to be a review of government credit card spending. But it is an internal, not independent, review.

There is no other conclusion: as thousands of Scots faced poverty pay and worked in zero-hour contracts, the SNP government used the public’s credit card on frivolous and self-indulgent spending for a First Minister who was as out of touch as her party is now.

Jackie Baillie MSP is Scottish Labour’s deputy leader