You have to read right to the end to see who Barry Cunning is and what he is on about, in the Herald today:
Cunning came 5th and last in Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, in 2016.
His argument is one we get headlined regularly from Macwhirter, McKenna and of course Monteith (Brexit) Wilson (Labour) and McLelland (Con).
I suppose we should be grateful for the admission of his baggage at the end.
Anyhow, I tire of this trope but let’s just go over it again for Cunning:
- Far lower infection and death rates
- 50% more beds and nurses
- Significantly more consultants and GPs
- 10% faster A&E
- Far lower hospital onset infections before and since Covid
- Faster vaccine rollout
- Faster vaccine rollout in care homes and so far fewer deaths there
- Far, far less privatisation
There’s more but that will do. All claims easily sourced.
Talking-up Scotland 
Liked your “cunning” play with words here. By far the most important difference is the last: Far, far less privatisation.
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Me thinks he should apply via deed poll
For name change
For absolute certainty he is not Cunning
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Is he Scottish? Deed Poll is an English requirement.
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Yes, Statutory Declaration witnessed by JP or Notary Public and recorded with Registrar General, in case anyone is interested how to do it in Scotland.
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That’s how I did it in England years ago – went and swore at a Notary Public 😀
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Cunning stunt.
Or…………….. just what you would expect from Labour.
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An entirely fraudulent comparative over NHS funding : One is deliberately defunded by political choice, the other is constrained by population equivalent of funds released by the former to SG, which then has the unenviable task of topping up by pinching it from elsewhere in their budgets (and that without the liberal view in London over which account headings are used to actually calculate the PE base value).
SG can go to mitigate this budget constraint so far, but Cunning presumes we are all as thick as Baldrick in swallowing his false equivalence.
Tory ambitions of privatisation in England as your final point has been pivotal in differing responses, when the pandemic landed it seriously backfired with reduced resources – Rather like Johnson’s decimation as Mayor of LFB, there is only so far you can stretch elastic.
The media have assiduously avoided exposing NHSE’s elastic had snapped and have been complicit in burying the bad news ever since.
I would not be surprised if NHSS’s current staffing levels are low compared to historical records, and that it is NHSE which is the outlier.
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