Professor John Robertson OBA

Thanks to AR for alerting me to this.

Russell Findlay, a former journo himself, is in the Scotsman today arguing, with great irony, that the SNP had created a hostile atmosphere and were preventing scrutiny during the pandemic.

That is, of course, the opposite of what happened, according to Dr Simon Case, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service under Boris Johnson PM, and his top adviser, at the Covid Inquiry. 

From the National in May 2024:

NICOLA Sturgeon was showing the Tory government “how to do it” during the Covid pandemic, according to WhatsApp messages sent by the UK’s most senior civil servant. Simon Case, who as cabinet secretary oversees the work of the UK’s entire civil service, made the comments in April 2020 just weeks after the first lockdown, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has heard.

Case was giving evidence to the inquiry on Thursday when the WhatsApps were revealed. In a conversation with former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara, Case lamented the state of the UK Government’s Covid response.

“It is awful,” Case – who at the time was a top adviser to Boris Johnson – wrote.

“This is how strategy advice is being developed – not a single expert involved in the conversation.”

He said it was an “appalling sight [if] you vaguely believe in evidence-based government.”

MacNamara said she was “really worried”, saying that the “last straw” for her had been when someone floated the idea of doing lockdown differently in some areas in order to secretly assess the strengths of different approaches.

There’s the Tory mindset Russell, secrecy, callousness, a general hostility to idea of protecting the vulnerable.

More at: https://www.thenational.scot/news/24341858.simon-case-nicola-sturgeon-showed-tories-how-it-pandemic/