I WANT Scotland to be independent.

Not to be separate or apart, but to join the world, speaking for ourselves, making common cause with friends and allies and working within the multilateral structures of the world – be it the EU, Nato or UN, or anything else towards common challenges.

If there is anything that has brought home to people the idea that problems cross borders, surely it is Covid.

The pandemic, at home, has brought into sharp relief for people just who makes decisions on their behalf and how accountable to them they are. In the wider world, it has proven just how unequal the world truly is.

We’ve seen worldwide that the virus can mutate and turn into different strains – if we do not treat Covid as a global issue, then it will be mutating in different parts of the world and coming back at us for years.

So it is all the more distasteful to see UK politicians trying to present this crisis as if it were some sort of Olympics, with the UK somehow doing well when all evidence says otherwise. Quite the reverse – the UK is not doing well, and even at that we’re far from out the woods.

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Yet, various UK ministers and Tory politicians are caught regularly trying to strike comparisons, usually based on misleading presentation of data, that the UK is doing well, or that Scotland is doing badly, and it is all entirely beside the point as well as distasteful.

The most offensive comment came from the UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson in December, when he said ”we’re a much better country than every single one of them” when comparing the UK’s efforts with Germany, France, Belgium and the US.

I find this just a staggering thing for anyone to say at the best of times, but even more so when the UK is doing so demonstrably badly it takes Trumpian rhetoric further than Trump ever managed himself.

It is all the stranger when you look at what the UK has actually done in promoting a global response. It is actually not a bad effort, much as I’d like to see more. The UK has made a substantial donation to the UN’s Covax programme, but there is still a $4.3 billion shortfall. Just on Monday, the head of the WHO said we are on the brink of “a catastrophic moral failure” with much more needing done.

I have called on the UK to convene a donor summit to bring the fund up to purpose.

The EU is also making great strides on how best to contribute and will co-ordinate the international efforts of EU states, making a huge contribution to multilateral efforts but everyone who can needs to play their part. Scotland would be an enthusiastic part of that global coalition, I have no doubt.

So I’m left wondering if this vaccine nationalism is genuine or just for domestic consumption. Some feel-good rhetoric to gee up the backwoodsmen in bleak times.

Perhaps a bit of both, but it is when it is applied within the UK that we start to see a pretty ugly side. The Tories have lined up on a daily basis to run down Scotland’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, using a snapshot of statistics to present a misleading impression.

It is, of course, the job of the opposition to hold the Government to account and scrutiny is welcome. But I’ve seen number of these attacks that have crossed the line into wilful misrepresentation of how we’re doing as a country and have caused real anxiety to people, at a time when we all need to work together towards the challenges we are all currently facing.

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The vaccine roll-out gives us all hope that there will be an end to this, and there will be bumps in the road as it is rolled out. I’m glad that the army has been drafted in to assist with logistics and would hope that if and when we can accommodate the thousands of volunteers I don’t doubt are ready to help, then we’ll have capacity to do what we all need.

But I think anyone trying to make political points mid-way through this – and we are still mid-way through this – is foolish indeed. Early last year, Sweden was held up by right-wingers, mask sceptics and anti-vaxxers as some sort of example of a country that was getting by without implementing strict lockdown restrictions. It now, a few months later, has some appalling statistics compared to its neighbours.

We will, at some point in the future, know who did well and who did not in response to the coronavirus emergency.

But in the meantime, I think it is incumbent on all politicians – of all stripes – to hold back on the point-scoring and instead look to working together to reassure people.

There’s plenty more work to do.