Professor John Robertson OBA

In October 2025, a Lib Dem EdinburghCity Councillor, Sanne Dijksta-Downie, used her 6-year-old daughter’s cancer diagnosis and recovery to suggest some sort of crisis in NHS Scotland under the heading ‘COST-CUTTING EVERYWHERE’. Bizarrely, her first example of cost-cutting was that there were never enough pillows for parents staying over on the ward! She went on then to bemoan the quality of pizzas given to patients and cups of tea and biscuits requiring to be provided by charities. She then complains about having to help with feeding, washing and toileting. Isn’t that a good thing for the understandably anxious children and the parents? I don’t know about you, but I’d be far too upset about my child’s frightening experience to tell the media about this trivia.

Strangely or perhaps not in a rag with a Mile Briggs advert on the front page, NHS Scotland’s latest 95.2% score [NHS Lothian was 94.8%, NHS England was 92%] in the 31 days maximum waiting time target for cancer treatment is not mentioned.

Similarly on the cancer care of a daughter, also in 2025 in the Herald, Barnsley Labour Councillor Claire Throssell shared a personal anecdote about her daughter’s delayed cancer treatment under English NHS care to criticize Scottish health policies, claiming bizarrely and entirely evidence-free, that they were “target-busting” but inferior in practice.

Six years earlier the Lib Dem MSP and future leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton rushed to the media after ‘saving his daughter from choking on a coin.’ The story was everywhere along with images of the four-year-old and daddy. Again, as with the previous case, I feel sure I’d still be too upset by the possible loss of my child to go bragging about my skills to any media rep who’d listen. The event happened on a Saturday night, he tweeted about it the next day and was across the MSM the next day.

This is by no means a Scottish phenomenon. You may remember in 2010, David Cameron invoking his disabled son in speeches on his ‘family friendly’ policies, which I struggle to remember, before going on to forget him and leave him behind in a pub.

There was also Jacob Rees Mogg, navigating Brexit and Austerity protests in 2017 and 2019, with his children in tow, and in the apparent hope of thus demonising the protestors in the media, as violent.

Then in 2022, Rishi Sunak attempted to deflect from his own inaction on climate change, with anecdotes of his daughters as the experts on household recycling.

Perhaps the most memorable example was in May 1990, when Agriculture Minister John Gummer obliged his four-year-old daughter to eat a burger in the midst of the ‘Mad Cow’ disease scare. 32 people were to die of the human form CJD. Cordelia was spared.

Is there any harm for the children in this behaviour, beyond the obvious criticism that these often-self-centred individuals are trying to seduce us into thinking they’re just like us and should vote for them?

Well, yes. First it exploits the innocence and lack of understanding of children for the adult’s personal interests. Second, it invades the child’s privacy subjecting them to scrutiny they could not refuse, and which might later impact negatively in their lives. Third, hopefully, voters may see through it as calculating or inauthentic. Finally, it puts unacceptable pressure on children, limiting their normal development of independent identities.

I’m agin it but this is where someone finds an example of me doing the same, somewhere!