The Scottish Parliament is a dysfunctional and impotent husk of a project, overseen by an emasculated, technocratic government that remains in place simply because of a lack of any credible alternative, writes Carlos Alba

Despite the best efforts of some commentators to link anything bad that happens with Scotland’s political leadership, there are some things that can’t, reasonably, be pinned on the SNP.

The high wholesale price of magnesium chlorate on the Shanghai metals exchange, for example, is clearly not the fault of the nationalist government at Holyrood; nor is the failure of Burkino Faso ever to qualify for a World Cup, or the fact that all of Lewis Capaldi’s songs sound the same.

Nor can we really blame the SNP for it becoming, over the past 20 years – in spite of everyone’s best efforts, including its own – the natural party of government north of the Border.

God knows, it’s given alienating voters its very best shot, taking failure of political leadership to new, abject heights that stumbling amateurs like John Major and Michael Foot could only dream of.

Read more by Carlos Alba

As well as driving the health and education systems into the ground, spunking billions on cynical giveaways to the middle classes and turning the country into an international laughing stock, with a series of failed culture war experiments, it has also foisted on the electorate a succession of humiliating sex and........

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