SNP minister's ‘joke’ about ferries amid major crisis shows they are taking voters for fools
The SNP have been doing their level best to turn Scotland’s ferry services into a laughing stock
I am not generally known to be ‘po-faced’ about bad jokes, political or otherwise. Even on my worst day, however, I hope I would know better than to make light of a transport fiasco that my party created – right as it reached crisis point.
That, however, is exactly what SNP minister Maree Todd did this week, sharing an ‘April Fool’ mock-up of a CalMac ferry, covered in SNP branding. “Cracking day in Ullapool,” she told us with a wink. Oh, how we laughed.
With at least seven CalMac ferries currently out of action and half of all west coast crossings facing disruption or cancellations as we head into Easter – to say nothing of the years of mismanagement that preceded this crisis – Maree Todd’s ferry ‘joke’ is another reminder of just how much Scottish islanders have been taken for fools by the SNP.
Painted-on windows
A cynic might reflect that covering a government-owned ferry with SNP branding would scarcely be a surprise worthy of an April Fool, after years of the nationalists blurring the line between their party, the Scottish Government and Scotland itself.
Someone with a wry sense of humour might suggest that ferries painted in SNP colours would at least represent an upgrade from the SNP’s history of launching boats with painted-on windows.
Anyone with any sense of judgement, however, would have known that using west coast ferries for an SNP-branded gag would be like a red rag to a bull for islanders. Perhaps Maree Todd simply does not get it – but for people from Stornoway to Arran, the state of their ferry service after two decades of SNP government is no laughing matter.
The saying used to go: “Unto the Lord belongs the Earth/ And all that it contains/ Except the Kyles and Western Isles/ For they are all MacBrayne’s.”
SNP centralisation
Growing up in Islay in the 1970s, as I did, this was still not far from the truth. Although the original David MacBrayne’s company had long since been butchered and eventually nationalised, the name remained a dominant force.
In any port, the MacBrayne’s manager was someone of standing – up there alongside the doctor, the banker and the minister – because whatever day-to-day gripes there might have been, it was a company that was rooted in the community.
The campaigners of yesteryear would by now have put today’s CalMac board in the stocks. Metaphorically. Probably. The once-proud company is managed by SNP ministers in Edinburgh who appoint quangocrats and consultants (with a few tokens on the board with any connection to the island communities that they serve). That community accountability has been broken by SNP centralisation – and turned our lifeline services into a bad joke.
People up and down the west coast are waking up to the reality that having SNP MSPs has not given them a ‘seat at the table’ with the Scottish Government – it has given them a licence to be ignored, talked down to, and worse still, mocked.
The SNP have done their level best to turn our ferry services into a national laughing stock. It is for the rest of us to decide whether we let them take us for fools once again – or laugh them out of the room.
Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
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