YESTERDAY we had two big political stories, and as always the Scottish one was completely overshadowed by the Westminster one.
Nicola Sturgeon's announcement of the publication of an important paper on the economics of an independent Scotland struggled to get the attention it deserved as this month's Chancellor destroyed the Prime Minister's entire economic platform.
Liz Truss remains for now the leader of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister, but this is a leader who has to be led. She has no authority, no credibility and no political capital left. She, along with the rest of us, must watch helplessly as new austerity policies are introduced that no one voted for – not even the Conservative Party.
This illustrates one of the most important reasons why Scotland needs independence. It is only with independence that Scotland can escape the malign shadow of a deeply dysfunctional Westminster.
A political system which grants almost the powers of a dictator to the Prime Minister and then allows that Prime Minister to be replaced by an internal decision within his or her party without a General Election or any input from the wider electorate is both profoundly undemocratic and a system which is guaranteed to produce leaders who are unfit for the job and profoundly lacking in the skills necessary to appeal to the public beyond the narrow confines of the party faction which put them in power.
We saw this with Theresa May, we saw it even more with Boris Johnson, and we see it most spectacularly of all in the rapid implosion of Liz Truss, a woman who would never have got close to Number 10 if she had had to put her case to the electorate.
We are all now facing the consequences of the economic wreckage left in the wake of Truss's free-market, jihadist experiment in unfunded tax cuts for the rich. Following Jeremy Hunt's bonfire of Truss's vanities yesterday, Keir Starmer was granted an Urgent Question in the Commons ostensibly to question the Prime Minister about her crash and burn U-turn. Truss did not show up for questioning, sending Penny Mordaunt in her place. Only after her new chancellor Jeremy Hunt had risen to speak and she was safe from questioning did Truss put in an appearance.
It was a bizarre and unsettling appearance. Truss remained silent throughout, her body language was that of a woman with no emotional intelligence with a deeply inappropriate affect and no real understanding of the immense damage she had caused to many thousands of people who are now facing soaring mortgage and rent payments on top of the prospect of having support for their energy bills being ripped away in April.
To be honest, Truss looked as though she was heavily medicated, and viewers were left with the uncomfortable feeling that they were watching a mental health crisis unfold before their eyes.
To absolutely no one's surprise, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross fully supports Liz Truss, the new Chancellor and the economic platform this month's Chancellor is proposing – which is the exact opposite of the economic platform that Douglas Ross fully supported last week.
Ross told STV last night: "I have confidence that this UK Conservative government can take the difficult decisions to get things back under control."
That would be the UK Conservative government which has been in power for 12 years. Ross doesn't want us to wonder why it is that things got out of control in the first place. Surely it can't have been because of Liz Truss and the Conservative Party?
Ross had confidence in the one before, and the one before that, and the one before that. It doesn't say much for his judgement. But then, judging the Prime Minister is way above his pay grade. Ross's sole job is to say and do whatever London tells him. No matter if it's the opposite of what they told him just a few weeks ago, making him look like a fool. Ross will suck it all up, because that's what principle vacuums do.
When last month's chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled his disaster of a mini-Budget statement, Ross and his Scottish Tory cronies were loudly demanding that the Scottish Government copy them in full, and if it had, today Ross would be just as loudly demanding that it execute a complete U-turn. His position is as untenable as Liz Truss's.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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