MSPs last week backed Scottish Government plans to hike the minimum unit price charged for alcohol from the current level of 50p a unit to 65p a unit.
In the debate leading up to the vote, Drugs and Alcohol Policy Minister Christina McKelvie told the parliament that backing the rise would "show that Scotland continues to be world-leading, with policies to improve the health of people”.
Today one of our readers argues that such a statement betrays then administration’s superficial mindset.
Graeme Arnott of Stewarton writes:
"When Drugs and Alcohol Policy minister Christina McKelvie told Holyrood that a vote in favour of a further MUP rise would 'show that Scotland continues to be world-leading, with policies to improve the health of people', she perhaps revealed more about her party's methodological approach to politics than she might have intended. What really matters, she might well have said, is the show.
"This focus on the appearance rather than the reality, the superficial rather than the substantive, is nothing that we haven't witnessed many times before. Having imbibed the lessons of spin from Tony Blair, the Sturgeon regime raised post-modern performative politics to the level of an art form until what might be described as an optics approach to leadership lay at the heart of her politicking. Christina McKelvie's statement clearly shows that it has no sign of abating under the hapless and worse than useless continuity candidate.
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"Yet, despite the self-righteousness of SNP ministers, the technologies of their performative politics are, somewhat ironically, transparently obvious: the transfiguration of achievement by announcement such that the announcement is the achievement; the creation of legal rights that cannot be legally enforced; consultations which fail to consult and reviews which fail to address an issue but which promise to review how to address the issue. The list goes on: the throwing of funding at an issue without any perceivable strategy for achieving any long-term change; the meritless reiteration of self-praise; and the pièce de résistance of performative SNP nationalism: the affirmation of identity with all its threadbare rituals of resentment.
"It is however an odd situation. Having repeatedly run up against reality, and seen their fantasies unravel, you'd think that someone with a brain and/or a spine in the Holyrood administration would suggest doing something different. But that's not how optics-led politics work. The SNP administration's entire approach is designed solely to make the SNP feel good about themselves, and it bears little, if any relationship, to doing good in the real world.
"Their equally useless partners in incompetence last week learned a hard lesson about SNP priorities. It's not about their agreement, it's not about Scotland and it's not about serving the Scottish people. It's all about them; and how they look to themselves. Narcissism has replaced nationalism."
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