Why did the SNP make allowances for Spain during Covid?

The Covid Inquiry’s recent Scottish sojourn brought several weeks of bad headlines for the SNP. One revelation got less attention than others but struck me as more significant than most, so I wrote about it for Coffee House.

That revelation was an email chain dug up by the inquiry dating from the first summer of the pandemic. It contained a discussion about which countries should be added to the list of ‘travel corridor’ nations. In one email, a senior civil servant argued for Spain to be added to the list because ‘there is a real possibility they will never approve EU membership for an independent Scotland’ otherwise.

If that seems like quite the leap, know that the possibility of Spain vetoing an independent Scotland’s accession to the European Union has long been a source of anxiety for Scottish nationalists. The email, addressed to then top civil servant Ken Thomson (but cc-ed to the offices of Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and others), was sent on 19 July 2020.