The rise in popular nationalism around the world is hard to understand and impossible to welcome. Whilst many in Scotland’s nationalist movement clearly have nothing in common with the likes of Trump and Farage, the SNP’s elite does. Like all nationalists the SNP seek to blame others for the problems we face. Trump blames Mexicans, Farage blames the EU and the SNP blames England. This is escapism.

This week, the SNP took their homage to Trump one step further when they apparently used a Party Political Broadcast to attack a journalist who dared to ask questions (report, 20/01/18). At that very moment, Scotland became a place where the Government parodied its critics on national TV. They out Trumped Trump.

Just like Trump, they used Fake Facts and ridicule to attack those who dared to question them.  Specifically, they took credit for free university tuition and free personal care for the elderly when it was Labour that introduced these. That’s right, the policies that they listed as their greatest achievements in Government were actually delivered by Labour!

Nonetheless, this  Party Political Broadcast will be remembered for how it attacked the media. This is part of the SNP elite’s long-term agenda of moving Scots away from trusted news sources and in to the arms of uncontrolled online content providers.

Indeed, many hardcore nationalist are happy to admit to completely ignoring the “main stream media” and instead using RT (the propaganda arm of the Russian state), Facebook (an echo chamber) online bloggers (trolls who attack people using the worst kind of language). Even my MSP, the SNP’s Gordon MacDonald, recently labelled the BBC as a “Fake News” outlet and suggested the channel should carry a warning making this clear (report 07/12/17).  This slip was rightly branded as ‘irresponsible’.

It’s time for the moderates in the SNP’s grassroots to start bringing their party’s establishment back in line. They need to behave  less like Trump, and more like an actual Government.