Climate shame reveals true face of SNP – all mouth and no trousers

That, it seems, is the central theory of the Sturgeon administration when it comes to government. Just say something loud and long enough, and even if it doesn’t come to pass there will still be plenty of true believers and loyal followers who think it’s happened anyway.

Yesterday, the curtain slipped somewhat for the great Wizard of Oz – the Scottish Government – offering a glimpse of how the art of magical thinking is deployed for the purposes of popular distraction. The curtain was tugged aside by Chris Stark, who heads the Climate Change Committee, which advises the Scottish Government.

The SNP’s own legal climate targets, we discovered, are “increasingly moving out of view” and “in danger of becoming meaningless”. Stark published what he called “the most damning report we have ever produced on the Scottish Government”. The report was, he said, a “red flag”.

A complete revolution in policy – and crucially in enacting policy – is needed if the Government is to hit its own 2030 targets. “The trend of failure will continue without urgent and strong action to deliver emissions reductions, starting now.”

A proper plan needs drawn up and “must detail how each of Scotland’s ambitious milestones will be achieved”. Promises of reducing car use “lack a full strategy”. Plans to make homes energy-efficient show a “lack of regulations and incentives”. There are “not yet adequate policies in place to deliver low-carbon heat and energy efficiency improvements at the required rate”. The Government has produced “a pathway where agricultural emissions reduce but without any policies to back that up”. Detail is “needed urgently”. Magical thinking indeed.

Green minister Patrick Harvie had “just not made a dent in the big challenge of decarbonising heating in housing”. On the Government’s efforts, Stark said: “We are just not seeing the scale of the response that we need.” He added: “Most of the targets have been missed so you start to question whether it has any real integrity.”

This from a Government which parades around as if it's greener than the Chicago river on St Patrick’s Day.

Some telling phrases come to mind. ‘All mouth and no trousers’. ‘All bubble and no bath’. A measured description would simply be: untrustworthy, without integrity or substance, and thoroughly phoney.

Simultaneously, unions warn that the Scottish Government’s much-trumpeted deposit return scheme will punish the precariously employed and low-waged. Food delivery drivers for companies like Deilveroo must register as “waste carriers” under the scheme, costing them hundreds of pounds, as they’re classed as self-employed.

Metaphorically, the SNP Government is Mr Micawber from Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield: full of boasts of jam tomorrow, but in reality incapable of following through on anything. When caught out, there’s always the assurance that "something will turn up". It never does. We’ve heard the promises long enough, seen the bragging come to nothing.

The SNP put its own head in this particular noose. The party, laudably, wanted to be better than the rest of Britain, but like old Icarus, its own overweening ambition – or rather its desire to show how exceptional the Sturgeon Government is – backfired horribly. It now looks foolish and inept.

Yet there’s an almost Trumpian belief at the heart of the SNP that it can do no wrong. The party knows there are enough hardline nationalists out there so committed to independence that it will be protected from consequences no matter how badly it fails. It’s a bit like Trump’s boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. And when you’ve a battalion of true believers at your back, perhaps that’s true.

And perhaps that accounts for the lack of surprise at this latest shaming of the SNP. It has consistently got away with promising champagne but delivering ditchwater, so why should now be any different?

It’s the party that puts Scotland first, right? Well, hello drug deaths, hello ferries, how’s it going ScotWind and National Energy Company, good morning collapsing NHS, afternoon furious teachers, evening all demoralised police officers. Goodnight Scotland.

The SNP is like the emperor in the fairytale. It’s without a stitch of clothes. The party is starkers but it keeps waltzing around like some red carpet royal at the Met Gala.

Look, I get it that folk who believe independence is the great panacea in the sky might think it’s smart to turn a blind eye to the SNP’s empty boasts, lies and failures. I’d quite like to see independence one day too. But I’m pretty sure the road to an independent Scotland isn’t found along highways littered with error after error, fake claim after fake claim, failed policy after failed policy.

In its desire to beat England, the SNP does Scotland down. It makes the country look inept. It makes the notion of independence seem stupid because the party which carries the torch for that ambition has repeatedly shown itself incapable of good governance for year after year now.

When caught out it blames London or evil journalists – or uses as a benchmark being better than Westminster, which is a pretty low bar. It’s like saying a punch in the face is better than a kick in the head. Nothing will change, though, until the base wakes up and tells the Government to get its act together as its conduct is undermining independence. The problem is, however, that the base won’t wake up. It’s more deluded than the Government.

So this is now the holding pattern: Government failure and political inertia propped up and sustained by a nation split 50-50 on the constitution. It may be a bitter draught to drink but the entire country loses as long as this masquerade continues, except, of course, Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. They can just keep on keeping on.

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