Well, that didn’t take long. When the BBC Scotland leaders’ debate finished, it was clear who the star had been: Claire Austin, a nurse who landed a direct hit on Nicola Sturgeon. She said that she has had to use food banks and that NHS nurses have had seen their pay rising by just 1pc a year for nine of the SNP’s ten years in power. She also asked where all of the money had gone, saying nurses saw none of it on the floor and dared the First Minister to come to visit A&E, or any NHS Scotland ward, to see how bad things are.
“You have no idea how demoralising it is to work within the NHS”, says audience nurse at #leadersdebate https://t.co/u5WlVZxgul pic.twitter.com/zkDnDkxbfE
— BBC Scotland News (@BBCScotlandNews) May 21, 2017
Immediately afterwards, the SNP started briefing that the nurse was the wife of a Tory councillor. An SNP branch in Stirling suggested that, if she’s using food banks, “maybe she needs to tighten her belt a bit more?” and spend her NHS salary more wisely. The problem: it took minutes to establish that she is not married to a Tory. It was fast becoming clear to the SNP that they had just compounded this PR disaster by trying to brief against not just a member of the public but an nurse on £22k.
Nick Eardley, BBC Scotland’s political correspondent, reported that the SNP was “furiously backpeddling now – they say they don’t know if it’s a Tory cllr’s relative”. Things got worse from there.
Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s Home Affairs spokesman in Westminster, then had to apologise to the nurse via Twitter.
As someone pointed out, if Joanna Cherry is a QC then she should be better briefed on the need for evidence before making accusations. As for the nurse, she’s taking it all in quite good humour.
IM NOT MARRIED! Let alone to HIM!! Please people get the facts straight
But this is not the first time that the SNP has used such tactics. Clare Lally, the mother of a disabled child, spoke out in favour of Remain in the last Scottish referendum. An SNP spinner told journalists that she “is actually a member of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet and daughter-in-law of former Labour Lord Provost of Glasgow Pat Lally”. She wasn’t.
Two teachers also challenged Sturgeon – about her dumbing down of exams and the misallocation of cash. They’ll be looking out for the horse’s head in their beds.
Oh the games, the games.
For lovers of self-destructive hubris – a quality that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex surely possess in spades – the saga of Prince Harry’s security is surely the gift that keeps on giving. Not since Jeremy Thorpe ensured that his former lover Norman Scott was deprived of his National Insurance card has anyone publicly
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