If you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question. That seems to be the mantra by which the SNP is currently abiding. Careful analysis of the many, many years of the ferry fiasco to the recent confusion over former health secretary Michael Matheson’s iPad bill has shown that important queries haven’t always been voiced when they should have been. And now, the latest example of question avoidance relates to a rather sensitive matter for the Scottish government: public trust.
It transpires that SNP ministers have quietly scrapped a question on this very issue from the Scottish Household Survey. The poll asks the public to rate their trust levels on everything from the civil service to local councils to the police. And, in every other year, the survey has also asked participants to rank their trust in the Scottish government. But not this year. This particular item has been ditched from the annual poll — and will be asked every 24 months instead. The move means that the next data release on this issue will come in 2026, after the upcoming general election. How very curious…
Are the Nats expecting poor marks in this category? Mr S wouldn’t be surprised: voters are looking less and less favourably upon the SNP and a series of recent polls have reflected this. In the month of April alone, one survey suggested Labour could become the biggest party in Scotland after the next general election, another showed Labour overtaking the SNP in the polls for the first time since the 2014 indyref — and just yesterday, the latest questionnaire revealed that First Minister Humza Yousaf now has negative approval ratings among, um, SNP voters. Ouch.
Steerpike hates to break it to the Nats, but ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. In fact, it usually makes things worse — which might explain why Scotland’s public services are in an increasingly dire state…
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