The National is a paper in need of help

Since its launch in Scotland in 2014, the National newspaper has made a name for itself for several reasons, none of them particularly good. It is not merely partisan in the way many British newspapers are, strongly supportive of one party and editorialising thunderously from the front page through to the opinion pages. At the height of Nicola Sturgeon’s premiership, the National was closer to a hymnal such was the reverence with which the SNP leader, her government and its policies were recorded. Back then, it was hard to distinguish the paper’s news articles from SNP press releases, except that press releases were slightly less sycophantic. And less Photoshopped, since for the first few years of its existence the paper was known for its unique splashes.

One of these splashes have got the newspaper into trouble. Saturday’s front page depicted a Spanish footballer kicking a rotund, topless man with a St George’s Cross painted across his considerable belly.