In political strategy the ‘dead cat bounce’ is a deception whereby a piece of good news is spun to make us believe that the bad times are behind us and the sunny uplands beckon.

The SNP in government is fond of this approach. It’s a concept borrowed from economics when a modest price surge in a terminally doomed stock is falsely portrayed as a sign of long-term recovery. It comes from the old adage that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from a great height.

The SNP has customised it and given it a Scottish politics makeover. Their perennial dead cats are the Scottish Child Payment and the baby box. If Scotland was ever declared bankrupt and bread riots were erupting on the streets, the SNP would say “aye, but we’ve got the child payment.” The party talks about those baby boxes in a way that makes you think they must have assumed supernatural powers.

In recent weeks, the SNP has been embroiled in a series of calamities and misadventures that in other parts of the world would be considered proof of a failed state. This happens when both the government and the opposition cease to function, having lost all moral authority. As a consequence, all the institutions in which its writ runs get poisoned.

Read more

The latest manifestation of this malaise began with the judgment in the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal against NHS Fife. Ms Peggie was vindicated in her action against the health board. She’d been harassed in four different aspects of her employers’ treatment of her after she’d made a complaint about being forced to undress in front of a biologically male doctor.

Ms Peggie’s triumph was in bringing a powerful health board to its knees; influencing the early retirement of its........

© Herald Scotland