Frankly, page 36
As the weeks passed, over the spring and into the summer of 2020, the nature of the challenge changed. For one thing, the political consensus that had held firm over the initial period of the pandemic started to fracture. The compliance of the public, underpinned by a strong sense of responsibility and solidarity, held firm. Lockdown only worked because people the length and breadth of Scotland abided by it. Indeed, the early advice that interventions had to be carefully timed because the public’s patience wouldn’t hold for long turned out to be wide of the mark. The Scottish people were the heroes of our Covid response.
However, with me dominating the airwaves and a Scottish Parliament election less than a year away, opposition politicians quickly reverted to type. Of course, in certain respects, it was important that they did so. Robust scrutiny of the decisions we were taking was crucial. This was especially so given their impact on everyday life, not to mention that they were being made, by and large, under emergency legislation. Mistakes and misjudgements were inevitable in the unprecedented situation we faced. The opposition had a vital role to play in making sure lessons were learned.
Tiredness sometimes made me tetchy when I was being questioned by journalists at the daily briefings or by other politicians in Parliament, but I didn’t resent the scrutiny. On the contrary, I welcomed it, even when it was uncomfortable. What bothered me were the claims that our mistakes were rooted in bad faith, and the repeated attempts to manufacture ‘scandals’ out of situations with perfectly rational explanations. Rightly or wrongly, I know that in normal times this is the stuff of politics, but deliberately manipulating events to erode the trust of the public in their government during a deadly pandemic was irresponsible. It often felt like the motive was to undermine rather than enhance the effectiveness of our response.
Nothing exemplified this better than the furore around an international Nike conference that had taken place in Edinburgh in late February. The second person in Scotland who tested positive for Covid had attended this conference. The case was publicly reported on 2 March and contact tracing was done in the normal way. Public Health Scotland established an Incident Management Team to oversee efforts to contain spread of the virus from cases associated with the conference. A genomics study conducted a few months later confirmed that these efforts had been successful. There had been a total of thirty-nine cases directly or indirectly linked to the conference, only eight of them in Scotland, but infection control measures had curtailed onward transmission.
The ‘scandal’ arose from the decision, which I take full responsibility for, not to disclose the link between some of the early Covid positive cases in Scotland and the Nike conference. When the connection came to light a few weeks later, claims of a deliberate ‘cover-up’ ensued. It was no such thing. The advice that I had received from the Chief Medical Officer not to disclose details of the conference was grounded in patient confidentiality. Only seventy-one people had attended the conference and just ten of them lived in Scotland, with the others hailing from England, Ireland and the Netherlands. Given the low number of cases at this time, there was a concern that labelling any of them as Nike conference delegates would risk patient identification. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but, on balance, I accepted this advice. With hindsight, I think it was the wrong call. Openness and transparency were vital to building and maintaining public trust. It was a mistake not to be explicit about the Nike link at the outset. But it was an error of judgement in a complicated situation, and one which had, as the genomic study had shown, no impact whatsoever on the overall spread of the virus. That didn’t stop the opposition, for months afterwards, claiming that it had all been a sinister and malicious cover-up, though for what purpose they could never quite explain.
The public didn’t buy it. People were able to listen to my daily briefings and make their own minds up, which helped build an exceptionally high level of trust in me and the Scottish government. This trust was priceless. As I tried to get the country out of lockdown and back to a semblance of normality, I needed every ounce of it.
Taking a country into lockdown, instructing the public to stay in their own homes, for all but the most exceptional of reasons, is one of the most momentous decisions any leader can be faced with. I quickly discovered that decisions about the pace and sequencing of bringing a country back out of lockdown are, if anything, even more difficult. I had access to excellent advice from the Scottish government’s in-house experts, and from external academics and public health doctors who sat on an advisory council that I had asked the Chief Medical Officer to establish in the early weeks of the pandemic. From my point of view, I had quickly become frustrated by the limitations of the UK-wide Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE). It wasn’t that I doubted the quality of its advice, but I had no direct access to those providing it, to ask questions or challenge anything I was unsure about. SAGE advice was also geared towards UK government decisions; it understandably didn’t give much consideration to the differing approaches of the devolved governments or the variations in demography or health systems in the four UK countries. Our own advisory council was chaired by eminent scientist Professor Andrew Morris and included experts like Professor Devi Sridhar, whose media appearances throughout the pandemic were also vital in helping the public understand what was happening.
There was enormous concern that, as we lifted restrictions, the virus would wreak its revenge. Contained so effectively by lockdown, would it rage through the population? Would our worst-case estimates about illness and deaths rematerialize? The overwhelming clinical advice was to be careful and cautious, an approach which aligned with my own instincts. I wanted to get the country back to normal as quickly as possible, but I was convinced that slow and steady was the surer way to do it. Letting the virus run amok would only set us back and make a return to normal life even more difficult. This cautious approach did create more complexity. Being told to stay at home was easy to understand, even if it was very difficult to do. When that straightforward advice was replaced with a complex, and frequently changing, set of rules, it was hardly surprising that tolerance started to wane. There were places that we could go and those we couldn’t; rules on how many people we were allowed to gather with, indoors and out, and stipulations on the precise distance we had to maintain. What was truly remarkable is how patient people were and how hard they tried to still do the right thing.
Over the summer, the Scottish government followed a policy of maximum suppression. This was sometimes wrongly equated with the ‘zero Covid’ approach that a few countries, such as New Zealand, had been pursuing. It was a controversial approach in some quarters. Many in the business community thought they were being subjected to trading restrictions for longer than necessary and in pursuit of a goal that was unattainable. Of course, I knew that achieving and sustaining zero cases of Covid was impossible in a country as integrated to the wider world as Scotland is, and that wasn’t what we were seeking to do.
We were instead trying to keep transmission as controlled as possible. Ahead of a vaccine being available, it was the only way to minimize the damage of Covid. In blunt terms, it was about trying to save lives. But it also seemed obvious to me that if the virus ran out of control again, public panic and a need to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed would push us back into another tight lockdown.
I believe it is an approach which ultimately saved lives. The number of lives lost to Covid in Scotland was far too high, but our age-standardized mortality over the course of the pandemic was lower, by a not insignificant margin, than in other parts of the UK. I understood the stresses and frustrations of men and women across the country who were running businesses and desperately trying to stay afloat in the grimmest of conditions. I knew the almost impossible balancing acts they had to perform every day to protect lives and livelihoods, and I had massive respect for them as a result.
Our maximum suppression approach also contributed to growing tension with the UK government over the summer of 2020, as it started to pull in a different direction. Boris Johnson was keen to lift restrictions much more quickly than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland were comfortable with, even if it meant living with a higher level of transmission. With an unvaccinated population, this seemed reckless to me.
The first flashpoint came in early May when, without any consultation whatsoever with the devolved administrations, the UK government dropped the ‘Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ advice that we had all used since the start of lockdown, replacing it with the much vaguer ‘Stay Alert’. All three of the devolved administrations declined to follow suit, sticking instead with the original messaging. Indeed, this underlines a point that was often lost. Although the Scottish government was regularly accused of pursuing a different course through the pandemic for the sake of it, or perhaps for political effect, it was almost always the case that the positions of the devolved administrations were aligned. The outlier, invariably, was the UK government.
This tension continued, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout the summer. By this time, Johnson wasn’t engaging directly with the devolved administrations very much at all, leaving that largely to Michael Gove. Whenever he did grace us with his presence, I would be taken aback all over again by how unserious he was. The fact that this was a virus that had come close to taking his own life made his attitude all the more inexplicable. The peak of my frustration came with Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme in summer 2020. Again, it was a policy that the Scottish government was not consulted on, nor did we have any ability to opt out of it. We just had to sit back and watch the UK government hand people a financial incentive to, effectively, fuel a second wave of a potentially deadly virus. It was infuriating, and I was powerless to do anything about it. I don’t think anyone could ever convince me that lives weren’t lost as a result of that initiative.
These frustrations were real, and they had consequences. The root cause was the unwillingness of the UK government both to respect the autonomy and parity of esteem of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish ministers and to understand the impact of their decisions on our areas of responsibility.
Despite the tensions and disagreements, the four governments did manage to work together effectively on many occasions, a fact that is often overlooked. Indeed, one of our most difficult moments arose from a collective decision to ease restrictions for a few days in the run-up to Christmas 2020. After months of family separation, we were all keen to allow some respite over the festive period. Even so, I was very anxious about its potential to fuel a new wave of infection. On the other hand, I was acutely aware that if I tried to deny people in Scotland the same freedom to see loved ones over Christmas as those in other parts of the UK were being given, I might lose their trust and forbearance, and the risk associated with that going into 2021 was also significant.
Despite all my reservations, I signed up to the four-nation agreement and told myself it was the right decision. However, the ink had barely dried when the Kent (later named Alpha) variant hit us like a truck. The speed of transmission and the initial uncertainty about whether the new variant would lead to more severe illness left all four governments in an impossible position. We had no choice but to take away many of the proposed Christmas ‘freedoms’. Plans that families had been given the go-ahead to make, celebrations that children had been allowed to get excited about, were about to be snatched away. After all the sacrifices that people had made, it was the cruellest of blows.
I broke the news at a media briefing late on the afternoon of Saturday, 19 December. Without doubt, this was my lowest moment in nine miserable months of dealing with the virus. I knew how hard it would be for people to handle the news. I had been looking forward to time with my own family too, so I shared the distress. I struggled to get through the briefing without breaking down. When I eventually got home later that evening, the floodgates opened. My inbox was heaving with howls of anguish and a fair bit of understandable anger too. Most people weren’t blaming me, but I felt responsible. I knew it wasn’t rational – after all, the arrival of a new variant wasn’t my fault – but I couldn’t help it. I spent the evening, well into the early hours, sitting on my sofa, drinking far too much wine and crying. In that moment, I wasn’t sure I could cope for much longer.
I did cope, obviously. And, while 2021 was still very tough, with lots of ups and downs on the Covid rollercoaster, the arrival of the vaccines made everything progressively easier to handle. The speed with which effective vaccines were developed and manufactured after Covid struck must be one of the most impressive scientific achievements of our generation. Those who worked round the clock to make it possible, including the Oxford University/AstraZeneca team in the UK, deserve all of the plaudits that came their way. The first doses of vaccine were administered in Scotland on 8 December 2020. It was an emotional moment. For the first time in what felt like for ever, there was light at the end of the tunnel. I recall sitting down after my daily briefing that day feeling less anxious about Covid than at any time since February.
There were still challenges and setbacks to come, of course. The emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants would throw us off course in the spring and then the winter of 2021. Campaigning in the Scottish Parliament election in May was a strange experience, given the restrictions still in place. The dining room of my house became a makeshift TV studio. It was from there – just me speaking to a camera – that I launched our election manifesto. During the campaign, an outbreak took hold in the South Asian communities of my Glasgow Southside constituency and the situation across the city remained difficult for weeks after, as it did in other parts of Scotland, most notably Aberdeen and the north-east. In the summer, the delayed Euro football championship was staged, with matches played in Glasgow, albeit in front of limited crowds, and a huge fan zone in Glasgow Green. I was beside myself with anxiety about the possible impact of the fan zone, but, thankfully, it passed without incident. I was similarly worried about the COP climate change conference in Glasgow in November. Here, though, we struck lucky, as the summit ended before Omicron took hold. Had it not, COP might have become the mother of all super-spreader events. Omicron would pose enough of a challenge without that being added to the mix.
Very slowly but surely, an increasingly vaccinated Scotland found its way back to normal, or what, in the post-Covid world, now passed for normal.
I find it hard, even today, to look back on Covid without a torrent of emotion. It was the hardest period of my career, possibly my life. I have found myself pausing as I write this, wondering if I am expressing it too strongly, but I don’t think I am. I am still haunted by the impact of the decisions I took and those I didn’t take. I still agonize over what I might have done differently. I think part of me always will. Should – could – I have taken the country into lockdown sooner? Given constraints on testing, and our imperfect understanding of asymptomatic transmission, could we have protected older people in care homes better than we did? Did we worry too much about hospitals being overrun? Could we have mitigated more of the impacts on those most vulnerable to infection, or on those who were always destined to bear the deepest and longest-term consequences of lockdown?
Based on what we know now, the answers to some of these questions might be yes. But based on what we knew then? I really don’t know. It will be for others – history – to judge. The UK and Scottish Covid Inquiries are crucial to our collective understanding. They also matter for accountability and the learning of lessons. Nothing I say here is intended to question the vital work they are doing.
However, this is a personal account, and it wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t talk about my appearance at the UK Covid Inquiry in January 2024.
The period between standing down as First Minister and stepping into the Inquiry witness box in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on 31 January 2024 had not been stress-free. Far from it. Somehow, though, I had coped.
However, in the days and weeks after my appearance at the Inquiry, I came perilously close to a breakdown. Without everything else I’d faced over the preceding year, I suspect that the impact on me wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad as it was. But, in the event, the Inquiry became the straw that almost broke the camel’s back. For a while afterwards, I could barely function. I cried, on and off, for days on end. On some mornings, getting out of bed was difficult, and leaving my house even more so. I lost any sense of perspective. I told myself I was personally responsible for every life lost to the virus. I was impervious to reason.
The support of my close friends helped, though I did my best to hide how I was feeling from my family. I had also received an avalanche of positive messages from members of the public in the days after my appearance. These really helped. However, for the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink. I want to stress again that I am not criticizing the Inquiry. It had the right to examine whatever it considered necessary. I am simply explaining how the experience made me feel.
I had painstakingly prepared. However, as I discovered when I found myself crying on the witness stand, I hadn’t properly considered the emotional impact of being confronted with everything my worst critics wanted people to believe of me. That in managing Covid, I was politically motivated. That I had acted in bad faith. That I hadn’t been transparent. That I was a control freak. I had expected tough questioning on the substance and quality of the decisions I had reached. I know that, even in trying to do right, I got many things wrong, and I feel as strongly as anyone that lessons must be learned from the mistakes we made – from the mistakes I made.
However, the thought that people might doubt my motives devastates me. It must be the worst charge that can be made against a leader – that in the face of a deadly crisis, they acted in a manner that was selfish or self-serving. I know, in my heart and soul, that I did not. I know that whatever mistakes I made, I made them in good faith. I know that I kept the promise I made to myself to do the best I could. In the period after my appearance at the Inquiry, however, I completely lost touch with that and allowed the very worst caricatures of myself to take root in my mind.
