EUAN McCOLM: Streeting's taken the gloves off over analogue John's neglect of Scots NHS - and the SNP don't like it up 'em, not one bit

Daily Mail​

08-07-2025

For years, the SNP 's failures in government were shielded by the prospect of a second independence referendum. Any and all inadequacies were ignored or excused by the party's supporters so long as Indyref 2 appeared to be within reach.
This willingness to put The Project before the SNP's performance allowed the party to record a string of election victories despite its catalogue of catastrophe.
Falling standards in schools, terrifyingly high drug death numbers, the ongoing ferries scandal… all of these, and more, failed to shake the SNP's popularity during years when former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was promising independence supporters a second referendum was just one last heave away.
These days, nobody thinks a sequel to 2014's vote is anywhere close to being imminent. The legal position - that the power to stage a constitutional referendum lies with the UK Government - is settled.
And, anyway, the last thing First Minister John Swinney wants, right now, is another grinding referendum campaign. The SNP is tired and fractured. Mr Swinney's focus is on trying to shore up support before next May's Holyrood election.
For a long time, it was understood within SNP circles that to criticise a political decision was to undermine the independence movement. Anyone daring to express disquiet over a policy was urged to 'Wheesht for Indy'. The main thing was to win independence then begin building a beautiful new nation. And if there were downsides, winning the prize was worth any amount of pain.
There is nobody more cynical than the idealist, is there?
Now, the SNP can no longer use the prospect of another referendum to deflect criticism. When John Swinney's opponents point to the things his government has got so badly wrong, he cannot - as Nicola Sturgeon so often did - dangle the shiny bauble of Indyref 2 in front of supporters.
It is customary for SNP health secretaries, when confronted with the failings of the NHS in Scotland, to point to greater problems in England. What poverty of ambition in the wail: 'At least we're not as bad as them.'
In fact, it is that bad. There are areas where NHS Scotland outperforms - or, more accurately, doesn't underperform as badly as - the service in England but there are others where it lags behind.
Anyway, comparisons with the NHS in England should be regarded as an irrelevance. Health is a fully devolved matter, the Scottish Government has the power to raise taxes and invest further in the service, should it choose to do so. The SNP - and the SNP, alone - is responsible for the parlous state of NHS Scotland.
This is a truth the UK's Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting decided, this week, to highlight.
During an interview about an improved App for NHS patients in England and Wales, Mr Streeting pointed out that a promised NHS Scotland App is still years from launch. John Swinney was 'an analogue politician in a digital age', a smart line that pithily summed up the situation while also serving as a neat critique of the SNP's stewardship of the NHS since the party came to power at Holyrood in 2007.
Twenty years ago, Scotland's health service was undergoing a major process of reform under the guidance of internationally renowned oncologist and academic Professor David Kerr, who created a blueprint for a more efficient and effective NHS.
Professor Kerr began his work under a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition at Holyrood but the SNP was quite happy with his ideas, which included the creation of centres of excellence for certain life saving procedures and the closure of failing facilities.
While Professor's Kerr's reforms were being put in place, the SNP spent a great deal of time and effort positioning itself as the natural guardian of the NHS.
In 2004, private polling commissioned by the SNP found that when the party attacked Labour over the NHS, Labour supporters took it personally. So emotionally connected were many voters to the NHS that to suggest the party they backed had neglected the health service was to accuse them of personally failing it.
The SNP adopted a new approach. Then health spokesperson Nicola Sturgeon spoke about what her party would do with the NHS rather than about Labour's failures.
Ms Sturgeon gave a series of impressive speeches in the years between 2004-07 in which she made a persuasive case for the SNP as natural heirs to the NHS.
In opposition the SNP carefully nurtured and grew the idea that only it could be trusted to look after the NHS. In power, the party has neglected it.
Beyond the extension of the provision of free prescriptions to include the wealthy and the gift of a 'baby box' to new parents, the nationalists have done next to nothing to address the health needs of an ever-growing elderly population and the demands of an NHS already failing to keep up with innovation.
Inaction is not passive. There are real consequences to the SNP's failure to address the needs of the health service.
Waiting time guarantees are so often broken as to be meaningless and stories of desperately ill patients forced to wait on trolleys in corridors while medics struggle to deal with intolerable workloads are routine.
So Wes Streeting was quite right, this week, to take the gloves off and start throwing punches.
More commonly, minister-on-minister attacks emanate from Edinburgh. The SNP is never more alive than when it is pointing out the stupidity and moral vacuity of the Unionist foe.
And it is never more brittle than when a nerve is struck. They don't like it up 'em. Not one bit.
The new NHS App stands to make life considerably easier for patients in England and Wales and it is certainly true that Scotland should not be lagging behind.
But the SNP's failure when it comes to NHS runs far deeper and wider.
While ministers preened and blustered about a second independence referendum, they neglected the health service.
In election campaign after election campaign, they promised waiting and treatment targets that could, and would, never be met.
And when these failures caught up with ministers, they created a new law, guaranteeing targets would be met (Laughably, no sanction was written into this law so it may be broken with impunity. Which, given the current state of the NHS, is just as well).
Over the past 18 years, the SNP has brought Scotland's NHS to its knees. Wes Streeting's criticisms were entirely justified.
But pointing out problems is not enough. If Scottish Labour is to win back voters' trust over the NHS, it will have to start - just as the SNP did two decades ago - telling a positive story of what it would do differently.