A great modern Scottish myth is that the handling of the coronavirus pandemic by government ministers in Edinburgh was vastly superior to that of their counterparts in London. This rather distasteful display of Scottish exceptionalism ignores the fact that where the UK government got things right, so did the Scottish and that, likewise, mistakes were replicated on both sides of the border.
This should come as a surprise to nobody. Quite rightly, both the UK and Scottish governments moved in lockstep throughout the worst of the pandemic, with scientific advisers and ministers in regular cross-border contact.
It’s not as if Sturgeon didn’t know that an inquiry would, in time, wish to examine the decision-making of politicians
The falsehood of Scotland’s superior response to coronavirus was built upon wildly differing perceptions of the heads of government at Holyrood and Westminster. Former prime minister Boris Johnson was – and remains – widely despised in Scotland while former first minister Nicola Sturgeon enjoyed the benefit of not being Boris Johnson.
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