Euan McColm: Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney's 'wheesht for indy' attitude has carried over into hospital deaths scandal

With polls showing support for secession on the rise, the Yes Scotland campaign feared the potentially destabilising effect of negative headlines. Better, they reckoned, to steer clear of knotty policy discussions and, instead, to maintain a veneer of relentless positivity.

Legitimate questions about gaps in the nationalist case were swept aside and a Panglossian approach adopted. All would be well so long as a sufficient number of Scots voted to leave the United Kingdom. Doubters were urged to “wheesht for indy”.

That mindset endures: There is never anything to see here; any and all controversy is cooked up by enemies of the project, don’t you see?

The scandal engulfing the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital is the bleakest possible consequence of that approach.

The facility in Glasgow opened in April 2015 amid a fanfare of publicity, with then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon proudly declaring it among “the most modern and best designed healthcare facilities in the world”.

As I write, Police Scotland is investigating the deaths of six patients – three adults and three children – at the QEUH.

After years of denial and lies, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has admitted a probable link between the deaths of children being treated for cancer and problems with the hospital’s water supply.

But the Scottish Government continues to reject any suggestion that it might bear any responsibility, even as evidence to the contrary piles up.

Both the government and the health board have denied that any pressure was applied to ensure the QEUH opened on time and within budget despite concerns about its readiness. Both John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon were positively indignant about the claim.

During First Minister’s Question Time at Holyrood on Thursday, their defence – for what little it was worth – fell apart.

In a genuinely jaw-dropping moment, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar produced the minute of a government meeting stating that NHSGCC had felt “political pressure” to open the hospital.

John Swinney blustered that the ongoing Scottish Hospital Inquiry would explore all issues surrounding the QEUH. People should, said the First Minister, wait for the report from inquiry chairman Lord Brodie.

Swinney told MSPs that the inquiry’s lead counsel Fred Mackintosh KC had said there was “no evidence of external pressure on NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to open the hospital early or before it was ready to be opened”.

The First Minister repeated that claim when questioned by journalists outside the debating chamber.

If Swinney thought his response would take the heat off his government, he was to be sorely disappointed.

On Friday, Anas Sarwar published an open letter to the First Minister, accusing him of misquoting Mackintosh and “choosing not to tell the truth to parliament”.

“You did not,” wrote Sarwar, “misinterpret the evidence. You fabricated it. You have misled Parliament and you have lied to the people of Scotland.”

In fact, Mackintosh had told the inquiry that health board bosses had not provided evidence of pressure to open the campus early. This does not, no matter how dearly Swinney may wish it it, mean no evidence exists.

Across social media, SNP politicians, activists, and supine journalists maintain the line that no pressure was applied to the health board. Any suggestion to the contrary is just more “SNP bad” spin from bad actors.

Nationalism is a powerful drug, indeed. So powerful that it can anaesthetise the user to the harshest reality.

Among the children who died from infections acquired while they were being treated at the £840million QEUH campus was 10-year-old leukaemia patient Milly Main.

I implore those now playing down this scandal to listen to Milly’s mother, Kimberley Darroch, who says the fears of bereaved families have been confirmed.

“We thought,” says Darroch, “that political pressure was applied to open the hospital before it was ready, and now we know the truth – that's exactly what happened.”

Denials about the matter, adds the grieving mother, have added to the pain and anguish of those who lost loved ones.

To many committed nationalists, Sturgeon was a leader of uncommon wisdom and unquestionable moral fortitude.

Oh, say her cheerleaders, she got us through the pandemic, she made Scotland fairer, she helped raise us all up.

What rot.

Sturgeon is the most cynical politician of her generation. Those nationalists who remain convinced she and her government bear no responsibility for the entirely avoidable tragedies that unfolded soon after the opening of the QEUH are the cheapest dates in Scottish politics.

Over more than eight years as first minister, Sturgeon repeatedly misled her most loyal supporters about the possibility of a second independence referendum. Time and again, she marched her troops halfway up the hill only to find the path ahead blocked by reality.

And those duped by Sturgeon kept quiet because, well, to speak up would have been a betrayal.

With a Holyrood election in May, it suits the SNP for its supporters to wheesht, yet again. Now is not the time for difficult questions about the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital or the people who died from infections contracted on its wards.

But what price this silence? Is treating the relatives of dead children with such contempt really worth a few extra votes in May?

The scandal at the QEUH should be career-ending for John Swinney.

Instead, he ploughs on, safe in the knowledge that many voters remain content to “wheesht for indy”.