Opposition should challenge new Covid lockdown - Brian Monteith

A release of the figures last week that there was a record total of 1,246 Scottish drug-related deaths in 2019, the worst since records began 24 years ago in 1996, was the intended subject for my regular column.

Other MSPs should follow the example of Independent Michelle Ballantyne

That figure is an absolute scandal and requires more than just a ministerial reshuffle if real accountability is to result in an improved outcome. At the very least there should be a motion of censure on the Scottish Government and Nicola Sturgeon’s proposed new Minister should also be rejected by MSPs; after all, Angela Constance served in the Cabinet as Education Secretary when the initial cuts to drug rehabilitation beds were being made.

If collective responsibility counts for anything, bringing back a failed minister who can be accused fairly of being complicit in the cause of so many deaths should not be allowed.

Nevertheless, for all there is much to write about in the sorry tale of how Scottish devolution – as tested to destruction by the SNP – is worse at managing drug addiction than anything the Tories achieved during those supposed dark days of the Nineties, I have had to leave that topic for another time.

Instead I again have to turn to the larger scandal of how badly the Scottish Government is handling its response to the Covid Pandemic. The reason I must pick up on this is not just because it has such a massive impact on people across the country but also because the main opposition party – the Conservative & Unionist Party – has become a clapping seal for the separatist SNP.

I wrote in this column back in June that the first Lockdown could be defended because of the need to create time to ensure the NHS had the capacity to respond to potentially calamitous demands on its resources – but having achieved those aims there was no reason to have a second lockdown. The likelihood was that more people would suffer from the denial of health treatment they should be entitled to expect, as well as the knock-on effects of growing unemployment, mental distress and business failures, amongst many other negative outcomes.

That opinion – carefully formed after reading screeds of data and contrary opinion pieces debating the pros and cons of what to do and taken from a wide variety of sources – was aimed at both governments in London and Edinburgh. Boris Johnson did not need to introduce a second lockdown and Nicola Sturgeon had enough latitude to do things differently even if he did.

Since then, not only have we endured that second national lockdown, we have had various political tricks played out over the allocation of regional tiers and local lockdowns. We have seen some cities like Aberdeen face local lockdowns when Glasgow has shown worse measures of infection, hospitalisation and death without being locked down.

We have seen tawdry deals in the House of Commons where MPs have been told that if they backed the tier system their now their area would move to a lower tier later – only for them to move to a higher one (a near certainty of imposing any restriction that cannot prevent the passing of the virus).

Subsequent evidence has shown repeatedly that lockdowns simply don’t work – be they local or national they only delay the inevitable spread of the virus. The preferred response should be to protect the most vulnerable while allowing people to get back to normal – applying the vaccine to key healthcare workers and the most vulnerable groups.

In the months that have passed I have read of people who have died from the denial of NHS treatment they should have had every reason to expect. One was someone I counted as a friend and mentor to me who wrote brilliantly for the Scotsman over many years. I have also read of many tragedies of people who have taken their own lives, so depressed and distressed have they become after losing their jobs or facing other personal challenges as a result of the lockdowns.

Since that now far-off time when we thought we were escaping the restrictions, I have seen the growing body of evidence that the PCR test used for establishing the veracity of infection has a genuine problem with providing so many false positives that scientific justification for the lockdowns does not exist. This includes one study at Cambridge University that found that none of the students who had tested positive in fact had Covid after all.

The news there is a new strain of the virus does not change any of the foregoing reasons for avoiding lockdowns and focusing the pandemic response on opening up the economy while protecting vulnerable people. Lockdowns remain the wrong response.

Nor does a new strain change the argument there should be a Covid-border between Scotland and England (or Wales and England). If restrictions on travel are required for some people then it is enough to say “stay local”. Making false chauvinistic boundaries the virus does not recognise – so it’s possible to travel from Dumfries to Glasgow but not Dumfries to Carlisle – encourages xenophobia and racism in an already anxious society.

Telling the whole mainland of Scotland, including those areas in Tier 1, it is going into Tier 4 without any evidence base that the new variant exists beyond Glasgow has no justification.

Opposition parties should be demanding the evidence and demanding a hearing in Parliament. That the Scottish Conservatives remain accepting of imaginary borders that feed division is reprehensible. Thank goodness for independent MSP Michelle Ballantyne in challenging Sturgeon’s government. The Scottish lockdown will not stop after three weeks, it too will morph into new variants of control that will go on into the summer. Now is the time to demand justification for their existence.

Brian Monteith is Editor of ThinkScotland.org​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​