Jason Leitch’s lockdown regrets

You may have been forgiven for thinking that the only story in town up here in Scotland is the election of the leader of the SNP, and Scotland’s next First Minister. However, for a day at least, some of the headlines have been stolen by a man who became almost as well-known to Scots as the outgoing First Minister: Professor Jason Leitch.

Scotland’s National Clinical Director, Professor Leitch was at the side of Nicola Sturgeon during the entirety of the Covid pandemic, the country’s equivalent of Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, and Professor Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, all rolled into one. Often he was the solo star during those lockdown press conferences – on our screens, on our radios, in our newspapers; he claimed he was used as the country’s front-facing figure during the pandemic because 50 per cent of the population disliked Sturgeon.