Keeping Scottish Politics on Track

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By Jason Michael

Surely a six minute delay in the arrival of the seven fifty-five to Glasgow is all the proof we need to know the SNP is more evil than Hitler. Welcome to the land of last straw politics, ruled over by Murdo Fraser and his band of desperate Yoons.

Scotland’s transport minister Humza Yousaf has been under mounting pressure over ScotRail, but is this yet another distraction designed to derail the bigger ambitions of the Scottish government? Of course it is, but that is politics – especially Scottish politics. Unionists in Scotland have found themselves, faced with the engine that is the Scottish National Party’s drive for independence, increasingly clutching at straws in their attempt weaken Nicola Sturgeon’s government’s popular support. No one likes a train delay, but in the real world – in a Scottish winter – we come to expect delays. But to make this the rolling stock of political one-upmanship is simply beneath contempt.

Through October and November ScotRail’s services have performed at an average of 87% against the Public Performance Measure index, that is a whole 2% better than the present performance of England’s largest rail travel provider Network Rail. So on yet another measure Scotland is outperforming the rest of the UK and still it is somehow a reason for Scotland’s impossible-to-please unionists to criticise the United Kingdom’s best performing devolved government. Certainly from the headers in the Tory media one would get the impression that we are in the midst of a national emergency. Even the BBC has gotten in on the act – while mentioning nothing of the disaster that is rail services in London.

Rail services, as the performance indicators show, are not perfect in Scotland. They are the best in the UK, but we could all do with them being better. So we ought to thank the critics for this. Yet this storm has nothing to do with the state of public transport in Scotland. It is nothing more than another seized opportunity by the unionists to undermine confidence in the SNP, because – like ScotRail – it is continuing to outperform every other party in government in the whole of the United Kingdom, and its timetable for separation from Westminster is still very much on track.

Ongoing criticism on the most spurious of pretexts of the Scottish government on the part of the unionist coalition betrays the deepening sense of panic in its ranks. This nonsense must help us mind the gap between the mass support for the SNP and the disproportionate weight of the unionist media in the country. Time and again the silliest of complaints against the government are being blown up out of all proportion by a media monopoly that does anything but represent the true feelings of the majority of the Scottish people. What we see in all of this is the real delay of the political reaction catching up with what is best for Scotland.

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Scotrail’s improvement plan

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Author: Jason Michael (@Jeggit)

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