SIR Keir Starmer is hitting headlines this morning for blasting Nicola Sturgeon over her handling of the Covid pandemic.

The UK Labour leader accused the First Minister of mishandling the health crisis as badly as Boris Johnson and said her communication may have been better than the Prime Minister, but not her actions.

A joint House of Commons committee report last week gave a scathing assessment of the UK Government’s response to the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The cross-party group of MPs focused on the response in England, however, Sturgeon’s government broadly followed the advice of the same clinical experts.

So do the public agree with Starmer?

 

Speaking to the Scottish Parliamentary Journalists Association in his Westminster offices, Sir Keir said: “I think Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the pandemic hasn't been, if you look at the relative numbers, has not been better than Johnson's.

“You know, she may have communicated differently, but actually when you look at it, whether it's on the number of deaths, proportion of deaths, inequalities that have been exposed by it, or Trace and Protect, again, has been a failure in much the same way as Track and Trace has been here [south of the border].

He also said he was “frustrated” at the way the constitutional question was “consistently being used by the SNP to mask their record”. 

READ MORE: Keir Starmer: Nicola Sturgeon mishandled Covid pandemic as badly as Boris Johnson