Snp's nationalist self-indulgence has turned scotland's gold to dust

Surely we should all identify what binds us and tap into our community spirit, our sense of national solidarity so that we can help one another though this testing time? I marvel at how our

community has helped each other, volunteered, turned up to work while facing real risks. Not just those in the NHS, but others like the lassie working at the till, the bloke emptying the

bins, the delivery guys ringing our bells with crisis-saving goods or take-aways – all while meeting many, many people in the course of their day.  So what kind of mindset is it that thinks

the priority must be to carry on campaigning to break up our country? To sow division when we need unity of purpose – and to see Covid-19 as an opportunity to express a narrow-nationalism

when collaboration should be the imperative?  Why is it that Nicola Sturgeon and her fellow ministers behave as if the political landscape has not changed and people are craving to break

free from a mythical colonial yoke that impoverishes people when the generosity of the British Treasury has been unbounding?  Over centuries the United Kingdom has been a melting pot; Scots

settled and worked in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – as have many from all corners of our island made their home in Scotland. We have toiled all hours and spilled blood together to

get through challenges even greater than Covid. We have together created and invented many of the glories that have advanced the modern world, liberating people from hardship, poverty and

suffering. There is no greater realisation of British solidarity than the creation of the NHS. Scots like Professor Edward Cathcart and AJ Cronin, Englishmen Wiliam Beveridge and Henry

Willink, and of course Welshman Nye Bevan – from across all of Britain and from all political parties formed our NHS.  Fortunately, because of the sound decision to ignore the European

Union’s slow-moving vaccine programme, the UK has been able to get ahead and start vaccinating since early December. What the public wants now, wherever we live, is to see speedy inoculation

rolled out in a fair and efficient manner. If politicians are promoting tasks forces for independence one day and then cancelling them the next, supporting legislation to hold a second

referendum and delaying Covid policies until they are re-badged as Scottish, they will be distracted and lives will be lost.   We can already see the evidence; The number of 80-year-olds

vaccinated in Scotland by Friday stood at 13% – in Wales it was 24%, in Northern Ireland it was 45% and in England it was 56% – some four times the Scottish figure. Nicola Sturgeon

originally ignored the offer of help from the British armed forces but is only now allowing them to step in. Frankly, it should not have been up to her to decide. A similar delay ensured

that Covid-infected patients continued to be moved from Scottish hospitals into care homes without tests or with their positive tests ignored when it had been stopped elsewhere – resulting

in the proportion of deaths with Covid-19 in Scottish care homes being 47% to England’s 30%. We should not be surprised at such as an appalling outcome. Scotland once had the finest state

education system in the world but since Sturgeon’s SNP came to power standards have collapsed to embarrassing levels. Be it schooling, the economy, hospital waiting times or policing, what

in Scotland was once gold has been turned to dust by nationalist neglect.  The lesson is simple. Nationalism divides us, it seeks to scapegoat and turn one group against the other. It

distorts and embitters our politics and prevents good governance. No politician should be spending a minute of their time seeking to break up Britain, we need to call out such political

self-indulgence for the selfishness it is and say no referendums for a generation. There’s a bigger job to be done.  * _Michelle Ballantyne MSP is leader of Reform UK Scotland in the

Scottish Parliament_