EAST Lothian has joined the Isles of Scilly and Isle of Wight in rare adjustment down in Covid restriction levels.

After eight months of lockdown, this feels unsatisfying, especially since the BBC fixates on England and makes no mention how Scotland fares better, let alone elsewhere.

UK Government assertions of leadership look increasingly thin as their results compare badly. Consider the countries in the table below, ranked by what matters – deaths per 100,000 population (source: ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy).

East Lothian Courier:

Apart from poor Covid performance, the table provides damning evidence that the UK Government claim that comparisons with other countries is meaningless may stem from effort to conceal their stewardship – particularly of England – as among the worst in the world.

The final column gives the lie to any trade-off between health and economy: Ireland does better than Northern Ireland in both.

Singapore and New Zealand have fewer deaths and suffer less economic pain than similar-sized Scotland.

How so? Because they are islands? So is the UK.

The scale of UK mismanagement is staggering, even before we discuss £10 billion wasted on unusable PPE, or contracts 10 times more likely to be let to Government cronies, or a £20 billion privatised test-and-trace that does neither.

Makes you wonder where Scotland would be had we voted for independence in 2014.

The ‘No’ argument was to stay in the EU, that our fiscal deficit of 8.3 per cent was unsustainable, that we needed Nurse to hold our hand.

Covid has added £210bn to annual UK Government expenditure of £874bn.

Borrowing £384bn to cover this sums to a 35 per cent deficit on anyone’s abacus.

Even if Covid were history by spring, the spending review predicts deficits exceeding 11 per cent for five more years.

And this is before including an IFS projection of additional -4 per cent Brexit hit to GDP – and a further -2 per cent if there is no deal.

An independent Scotland still in the EU might have mirrored Denmark: only -16 per cent on GDP this year and -8.3 per cent thereafter. It’s certainly more attractive than more ‘world-class’ bluster from bankrupt Boris.