Dan Wootton: 'Time Sturgeon gets a taste of her own medicine'

It’s time Nicola Sturgeon gets a taste of her own medicine.

At every stage of this unprecedented pandemic, the Scottish First Minister has attempted to blame others when the going gets tough.

Whoever could forget her ludicrous claims last summer that her SNP administration came close to wiping out Covid altogether…until pesky English visitors like me brought the disease back in.

She’s attempted to invent imaginary borders between Scotland and England to sow division and further her independence cause.

The media, which is largely in the tank for Sturgeon, runs with her narrative with hardly any fact checking.

Well, it’s time for that fact check because today Scotland is the Covid capital of Europe and the media is ignoring the story because Sturgeon finally has no one else to blame.

Analysis in The Sunday Telegraph suggests even pinning the surge in cases on the Euros may not be accurate.

In fact, it reported experts saying the “real problem may be closer to home”, including “a combination of a slower rollout of second vaccine doses, lower levels of antibodies in the population and a failure to contain the initial outbreak of the new Delta variant in Glasgow”.

Scotland’s rate of infections is now 317 per 100,000.

That’s double the English rate of 149 per 100,000.

The two worst regions in the UK are now Dundee and Aberdeen, data from the Zoe app shows.

Now believe me I’m not saying for a second that this is the fault of Scottish people.

We should know by now that Covid spreads in waves that are often completely out of our hands.

But it’s Sturgeon who has stoked this competitive narrative to further her own political cause this past year and she should be called out for it.

Notice no major English politician is blaming Sturgeon for failing to properly police a Covid super spreader event in the form of the Euros or suggesting Scots should be banned from travelling to English cities.

Perhaps next time, Sturgeon will show the same maturity, although somehow I doubt it.

Sajid Javid

I can’t quite believe it, but the new Health Secretary continues to speak such common sense when it comes to Covid.

Sajid Javid is making arguments that people like me begged Matt Hancock to consider for months.

As he wrote in a well-balanced and considered column for the Mail on Sunday today: “The economic arguments for opening up are well known, but for me, the health arguments are equally compelling.”

Javid is laying the groundwork for a successful July the 19th reopening by being realistic about the risk too.

Cases WILL “rise significantly” and we CANNOT eliminate Covid entirely, he argues.

But the vaccines ARE working.

As he explained: “Tragically, the last time we had 28,000 new cases of Covid-19 in a day, we saw about 500 people die each day. On Friday, we had almost 28,000 cases a day, but 24 times fewer people lost their lives.”

Now Javid’s big challenge is how to ensure the NHS is able to deal with the “vast elective backlog”, for which the government has granted an extra £1 billion in funding.

It’s not going to be easy but going forward we must protect our freedoms AND the NHS.

Mask Mandate

There are positive noises coming today from the government regarding a full return to our freedoms.

Mask mandates will go

So too will the painful need to scan QR codes to track everywhere we go.

And, according to the Sunday Telegraph, “plans are also underway to repeal sweeping powers which allowed councils to enforce Covid-19 regulations, including by allowing officials to shut down venues that failed to comply with the rules”.

Going forward, “local authorities will only be able to act in exceptional circumstances”.

It’s about time. Our jobsworth councils have put the hospitality industry in particular through hell this past year.

The Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick was making all the right noises on Sky this morning too.

But there is still the normal scientific scaremongering.

Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told Sky News he will continue wearing a mask “indefinitely” because it “can reduce the risk of transmission”.

As is often the case, it was Camilla Long who summed the situation up best in The Sunday Times today.

She wrote: “I’m beginning to wonder if people who are obsessed with Covid might experience serious emotional difficulty in accepting that it soon actually might be over. Everywhere you see them: the scientists and politicians warning us that masks and social distancing will be needed for ‘years’, even though the threat is now nearly zero. What are they clinging on to? Do they get off on the attention?

“If there’s one thing the past five years of politics has taught us, it’s that some people, like ultra-Remainers, find it really, really difficult to let go.”

Football Coming Home

And what a weekend this has been for England.

Congratulations to Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane and the whole team.

This year there really is reason to believe football’s coming home.

But for me, the euphoria of seeing thousands of happy folk coming together to cheer and hug and celebrate on our streets will leave such a positive psychological impact on the country.

Let’s hope it continues this time next week when the Euros final will be played