Watching First Minister’s Questions for a while can start to feel like you’ve stepped into the classic film, Gaslight.
In this scenario, we are Ingrid Bergman, recognizing the villainous nature of Charles Boyer’s character, while the SNP takes on Boyer’s role, attempting to convince us to disregard what we clearly see and hear.
The Scottish Government surely can’t be as flawed as we portray it. After all, that friendly Mr. Swinney assured us otherwise.
So, when the Nationalists spent yesterday in Holyrood portraying themselves as Scotland’s defenders against policies they once supported or left untouched, I couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that something was causing all the gas lights to flicker.
First Minister John Swinney serves as a prime illustration. He openly welcomed Rachel Reeves’s announcement about ending the two-child benefit cap.
“Labour MPs have been marching through the House of Commons voting to uphold the two-child limit since they took office 18 months ago,” he asserted, “It has been an absolute disgrace.”
That’s strange. I could have sworn this was the same Swinney whose mob had consistently promised to mitigate the effects of the cap. And if they had kept that promise, why would the Chancellor dropping it in England have made any difference?
The SNP banged on ceaselessly about the two-child cap, so much so that it seemed as though they had resolved the issue. In fact, it was all so much cant.
Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in the classic 1944 film Gaslight
First Minister John Swinney’s SNP spent yesterday in Holyrood posing as defenders of Scotland from policies they either supported or left in place
They say God loves a trier. If so, Kenny Gibson must be high on the list for sainthood.
The Nationalist backbencher posed as the tribune of the entrepreneurs, echoing the Scottish Chambers of Commerce’s assessment that Reeves’s fiscal prescriptions would ‘further dial up pressure on businesses, risking our reputation as a magnet for global investment’.
There is no surer way to pile pressure on business and dissuade global investment than by turning Scotland into the high-tax capital of the UK.
But that’s precisely what the SNP has done. Oddly enough, Gibson has been very quiet on this point.
Then there was Kevin Stewart. If there was an Oscar for Best Performance in a Toadying Question, his mantelpiece would be blinging with gold statuettes.
There is no indignity to which he will not submit himself in an effort to please the boss.
He intoned gravely that ‘people across Aberdeen and the North-East are worried about their jobs’ and warned that investment in the North Sea was ‘at a record low’.
He lamented the Chancellor’s decision not to scrap the energy profits levy and was fearful that ‘Labour’s choices’ would ‘cost jobs and drive a more rapid decline in the North Sea’.
Labour’s choices? When Rishi Sunak introduced the levy in 2022, the SNP not only welcomed it, they said it ‘should have gone much wider’.
You’ll never guess who was an SNP government minister in 2022.
And it wasn’t just the Nats.
The Vegan-Nats were at it, too. Ross Greer scolded Swinney on the lack of a just transition plan for workers at Mossmorron, who’ve just been transitioned out of a job.
The Scottish Government promised a plan but didn’t deliver one. You might consider that wanton dereliction of duty, but under the SNP it’s more commonly known as ‘Thursday’.
Yet amid Greer’s puffed-up indignation, he forgot it was his party that pushed Net Zero more aggressively than any other.
Industry warned it would mean redundancies, but these lentil-brained Marie Antoinettes – ‘let them eat soya’ – pressed ahead all the same, not because they didn’t believe the warnings but because they didn’t care.
Rab the roughneck would just have to find another way to feed his family. Greer’s poisonous, anti-prosperity politics came first.
He is, every bit as much as Swinney, the reason Mossmorron workers will be getting a P45 in their stocking this Christmas.
Alas, there will be no Hollywood ending for those of us who must bear the brunt of the SNP’s hypocrisy, whether on the two-child cap, the cost of living, or energy costs.
We’re being gaslit… and paying through the nose for the gas.
