It is frequently difficult to measure the extent of SNP failure. Every year figures are released that demonstrate that Scotland is poorer than England and that we depend on a subsidy, but few SNP supporters either pay attention or believe the figures. Economic data is boring and difficult to understand. The SNP succeeds in questioning the truth of its own figures and anyway blames Tories for its own failure.

So too Nicola Sturgeon somehow had a good pandemic despite being responsible for neither of the things that made a difference, furlough and the vaccine. Her daily announcements about how Scotland dealt with Covid better than the wicked Tories saved few if any Scottish lives. Her divergence on masks on lockdown and all the other minutiae that we have since dispensed with made no obvious difference to health outcomes in Scotland, but they did make a political difference. Scotland was different. That was the point.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Education Matters