THE UK Conservatives seem intent on making a better case for Scottish independence than the SNP.

Questions over Boris Johnson’s domestic soft furnishing bill follow a year in which it seems Britain is being administered by a kleptocracy. In this they have been ably assisted by the Labour Party who have hit on a novel method of political opposition: just go along with most of what the Government does but do it in a better fitting suit and quality hair products.

It’s just as well that the Tories have sportingly volunteered to do the heavy lifting for the cause of Scottish independence because the two main Scottish parties who have lived off the concept for 14 years have done nothing to advance it themselves.

The SNP manifesto was an un-costed letter to Santa that contained little to suggest they possess the wit or the will to protect those communities facing the brunt of the pandemic’s after-shocks. The phrase "Covid Recovery" is now so trite and contrived that it’s been stripped of all meaning by political leaders who reach for it without offering a coherent strategy.

Both Labour and the Scottish Conservatives could have made merry at the massive gaps in the SNP manifesto. But such is their joint obsession with stopping the beastliness of a second referendum that they’re blind to the real failures of government.

The SNP’s manifesto had several eye-catching moments such as money to reduce the educational gap and a pledge to build thousands of homes for social rent. These though, required to be part of an overall, long-term strategy aimed at pulling up the working-class communities who have suffered most from a decade of austerity.

Free dental care? It sounds great, but in neighbourhoods where life expectancy is 20 years less than in more affluent suburbs what good will that do … apart from ensuring that your last breath is a minty one?

Scotland is groaning under the weight of bureaucratic bodies. These grease the wheels of the public sector, executive gravy train which runs 24/7 every day of every year. Scotland has a parliament, 32 local authorities and dozens of health and education stake-holder organisations. It has a quango sector so big it could send ambassadors to the UN. The SNP though, doesn’t think that’s enough and wants to add a National Infrastructure Company which will “manage public assets”. There will be a £50 million prize for an organisation to manage “economic transformation”. I could tell you the shortlist right now. And isn’t that the job of Scottish Enterprise anyway? More bureaucrats; more managers; more fog.

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Where was the economic vision; the acknowledgement that youth unemployment has jumped to 50 per cent and higher in working-class communities? Capitalism will seek every advantage the market gives it to recoup lost profits. That means fewer jobs; lower wages and longer hours. The banks, whom we bailed out in 2008, aren’t returning the favour 13 years later.

Last week, on an election forum hosted by the political website, Conter Jonathon Shafi, the co-founder of RISE and the Radical Independence Campaign, was withering in his denunciation of the SNP’s industrial plan: “The SNP Government has sold off all of Scotland’s green and renewable assets to global investors. Those are our natural resources. They form a key infrastructure for Scotland that should be held in common hands: a wealth used and re-distributed for the people of Scotland. This could have been a great way to kick-start an industrial strategy.”

A decade ago, Alex Salmond was right to be optimistic that Scotland could be the Saudi Arabia of renewables, such is the natural bounty bequeathed to the country in wind and wave power. But, as the workers of Bifab in Burntisland found to their cost, the Scottish political classes lacked the wit and managerial competence to harness this effectively. The corporate forces which control the global supply change now treats Scotland as an old station on a disused branch line.

There was no vision; no strategy and no stomach to fight for what we already had. Instead, this party has spent the best part of a decade positioning itself as a friend of big business and cultivating an entirely bogus and narcissistic obsession with identity politics and hate crime which it uses to gaslight working-class communities when they ask difficult questions.

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And where was the hint of meaningful land reform which might make it easier for rural communities to claw back some of that half of Scotland that still resides in the property portfolios of 500 very rich families and overseas trusts? Having cowered from using its tax powers to make the rich contribute a little more to the Covid recovery, cuts will inevitably follow, and in those places where cuts always happen. We've been given advance notice of this with the threat that hangs over Maryhill Library and dozens of other community lifelines in Glasgow. Thus, those who might have relied on these in the straitened times ahead will become a little more alienated; a little more marginalised.

In 2016 RISE (Respect Independence Socialism Environmentalism) was founded to fight the last Holyrood election on a programme of radical self-determination. Immediately, the SNP sent in its attack dogs as it sensed a threat to some well-upholstered lifestyle/salary/pension packages. This time around, the same party shills, aided by a few of its media glove-puppets, have been detailed to do a similar hatchet job on Alba.

Thousands of working-class supporters have migrated to Alba, having been sickened by the SNP’s fake radicalism and the widespread misogyny in the party. Many have campaigned their entire adult lives for independence, yet now find themselves labelled transphobic and anti-"progressive", these being the favoured, shape-shifting idioms of the civic elites when they want to shut down honest debate.

Today, many of us will flock to beer gardens and cafes to celebrate the end of lockdown and what, we hope, will be the beginning of the end of the pandemic. For many working-class communities though, this is only the end of the first part of Covid-19. The second part will last a generation and nothing in the SNP manifesto suggests it can expect any long-term help from the Scottish Government.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.