Who’s to blame for Scotland’s ferry fiasco?

You wait eight-and-a-half years for someone to lose their job over the SNP’s ferries fiasco, then two sackings come at once. So which Scottish government minister has finally paid the price for a scandal that has left islanders without reliable ferry services, brought the Scottish government and its agencies into disrepute, and cost Scottish taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds and counting? 

Not Derek Mackay, the junior minister responsible for transport when the contract was awarded in October 2015 – in a typically boosterish fashion at the SNP’s conference. He resigned in February 2020 after it emerged he had sent messages to a teenage boy.

The first minister at the time the ferry contract was awarded, Nicola Sturgeon, has also washed her hands of the crisis. While still on the political scene, she has kept a relatively low profile since stepping down not long before the SNP’s finances became a major story. This week marks the one-year anniversary of Police Scotland raiding her home as part of its Operation Branchform investigation.