The Scottish National Party (SNP) can be likened to an invasive species, stubborn and pervasive. However, the upcoming Scottish Parliament election in May offers a crucial chance to address its enduring presence.

This election could potentially herald a new era for Scotland, one where the country shakes off years of inertia and moves beyond nearly two decades marked by perceived failures and mismanagement.

For those who dream of such revitalization, an interview with John Swinney over the weekend offered a sobering glimpse of what the future might hold. Swinney, the First Minister, expressed his desire to remain a ‘long-term’ leader. He pledged to complete a full term if re-elected and even hinted at standing again in 2031.

His statements, made just before the Christmas holidays at Holyrood, might have seemed optimistic or perhaps overly ambitious, depending on one’s perspective. Maybe the festive spirit had already swept through, but his intentions were clear.

This forecast might be disheartening for some, as current polling suggests a likely win for the SNP. Fortunately for those hoping for change, a majority victory seems improbable at present.

Either way, it’s a depressing forecast because the polls currently predict an SNP victory, although mercifully a majority appears to be unlikely.

John Swinney, pictured with former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, wants to be a ‘long term’ leader for Scotland

The SNP’s stewardship of Scotland has been dogged with paralysis and inertia

Nationalist rule has been a kind of permafrost for public life, leading to paralysis and inertia, where meaningful reform is off the table (or badly botched).

Take the NHS, which has been judged to be ‘financially unsustainable’ by the public sector watchdog Audit Scotland.

A newspaper profile of the ‘invisible’ NHS chief executive Caroline Lamb, who makes only rare appearances on the front line of hospital care despite earning more than £200,000 a year, contained a telling line.

A political insider noted a ‘weariness in the civil service about suggestions of any reform that might rattle a special adviser to the SNP’.

Those in charge, they told the Sunday Times, had little choice but to ‘manage decline’ – though it’s more of a desperate downward spiral, with no one willing to be held accountable for the manifest deficiencies of the NHS.

Government by special adviser is no way to run a country, though you might wonder what’s so special about their advice given the crisis in so many of our public services.

Scotland is crying out for exactly the sort of change that will ‘rattle’ SNP functionaries but it’s nowhere on the horizon.

The only ‘blue-sky thinking’ offered by the SNP is yet more costly rumination about another independence referendum.

Many hours have been wasted by those wearied civil servants, living in fear of seemingly all-powerful SNP strategists, drawing up plans for a parallel universe.

As we reported last week, Mr Swinney’s £30,000 independence relaunch was a humiliating flop, with as few as 28 people bothering to read the Fresh Start With Independence paper on some days.

The Scotland in Union campaign group found only 3,934 people in the UK browsed the prospectus in its first 33 days online.

There’s nothing remotely ‘fresh’ about these rehashed ideas which fail to address unresolved questions from 2014 on currency and any number of other issues – or at least to provide any convincing answers.

The useful idiots of the Left-wing commentariat provide a willing audience for much of this propaganda, helping to provide a sheen of credibility for the most preposterous proposals.

A case in point is a recent interview with Mr Swinney by former New Labour spin chief Alastair Campbell and former Tory minister Rory Stewart for their podcast, The Rest is Politics.

It’s hard to imagine a chummier chat, with Mr Stewart admitting that neither he nor his co-host had mugged up on Scottish education, so they let the First Minister off the hook with a soft-soap exercise.

Try and envisage the polar opposite of Jeremy Paxman in his heyday and you’d come close to the sycophancy and deference shown to Mr Swinney.

He was allowed to trot out soundbites about how wonderful schools are, with no consequences.

As fervent Remainers, Mr Campbell and Mr Stewart naturally gave Mr Swinney an easy ride, though sadly they must have run out of time to ask him about the chances of Scotland regaining EU membership in the event of independence – and why it could lead to the adoption of the Euro as our currency. 

True, it’s only one podcast – albeit a popular one – but this docile approach is reflected in much of the media, including the BBC.

A shameful paucity of opposition at Holyrood is another contributory factor, fuelling the sense among many voters that there’s no real alternative.

Yet while SNP ‘perma-rule’ continues, there’s no hope of boosting the economy despite Mr Swinney’s talk of growth. It is hard to take seriously from a party which once governed alongside the Marxist Greens.

He also has a deputy, Kate Forbes, who was held up as a business guru – but one of her big ideas was to tell new firms to set up in cupboards to cut their rates bills.

Ms Forbes won’t be around for much longer but how many of us truly think there’s anyone waiting in the wings with a sounder grasp of how businesses operate?

Meanwhile, taxes remain high and may go higher in the Scottish Budget next month, notwithstanding Mr Swinney’s insistence that income tax won’t be hiked.

Mind you, he also said his party hadn’t broken manifesto promises ruling out tax-grabs, when it patently had – so nothing he says can be trusted.

Scotland is already the highest-taxed part of the UK after the SNP used the powers of devolution not to relieve the tax burden but to increase it to eye- watering levels.

Another SNP government will inevitably mean higher taxation, whether in this Budget or the next, given that the £5billion hole in the nation’s finances is greater than the annual budgets for transport or policing and public order.

Taking a 40-year view, the Scottish Fiscal Commission projects that Scottish public spending will exceed funding for that spending by, on average, 4.1 per cent each and every year.

That represents a sharp deterioration from estimates issued as recently as April.

Adjusting to account ‘for a possible UK Government response to its [own] fiscal sustainability pressures’ widens the gap between spending and revenues to 13.2 per cent a year.

Total devolved social security spending in Scotland is due to soar from £6.22billion this year to £6.93billion next year, and then to £7.92billion by 2027/28 – and £9billion a year by the end of the decade.

More and more taxpayers’ cash is being ploughed into state handouts, with no plan, and indeed no appetite, to cut back on spending.

It means more pain in the pipeline for those who work for a living, and for future generations who will have to pay the cost of a bloated welfare system.

Polling day in May will be a chance to change government but also to change Scotland – and free it from the yoke of toxic nationalism.