It was Opposition Day in the Commons yesterday, with the SNP plumping for a debate on Covid contracts – a bold choice given the £500 million approved by Holyrood without scrutiny. For leader Ian Blackford however it was a golden opportunity to rail against Westminster’s ‘endemic cronyism during a global pandemic, the misuse of funds, and covid profiteers.’ At least he had the good sense to make his claims about ministers ‘funnelling covid cash from the frontline into the pockets of their rich friends’ under parliamentary privilege, unlike Labour’s Grand Poobah Angela Rayner, collector of titles and dispenser of insults.
Blackford might have thought the Covid ‘chumocracy’ would provide him with rich pickings. Unfortunately he had not reckoned on the intervention of South Suffolk MP James Cartlidge, who pointed out Scotland was now being dubbed the ‘covid capital of Europe’ – an intervention to which the poker-faced Blackford replied: ‘We really should not be playing political football.’
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