Sturgeon not ‘ecstatic’ about Johnson’s Scotland trip, questions whether the PM’s visit is ‘essential’ travel

The Scottish first minister has questioned whether the UK prime minister’s planned visit to Scotland on Thursday was truly “essential”, adding that both she and Boris Johnson have to lead by example.

“People like me and Boris Johnson have to be in work for reasons I think most people can understand, but we don’t have to travel across the UK. Is that really essential right now?” Nicola Sturgeon said on Wednesday. 

We have a duty to lead by example and if we are going to suggest that we don’t take these rules as seriously as we should, it gets harder to convince other people.

While insisting that the PM was not unwelcome in Scotland, she added that she was not “ecstatic” about Johnson’s upcoming visit, which has been billed by some commentators as a chance to hail the benefits of the union amid Sturgeon’s independence push. 

The Scottish leader said she had decided it wasn’t right for her to travel from Edinburgh to the new mass vaccination centre in Aberdeen, or one of the many vaccination sites being constructed by the British army, due to the pandemic. Correspondingly, it didn’t seem right, in her view, for the prime minister to travel from London to Scotland. 

Currently, it is illegal to travel from England into Scotland without a “reasonable excuse”. 

The comments come as all four nations of the UK look to tighten borders in order to prevent new variants of Covid-19 entering and undermining inoculation progress. 

Almost seven million jabs have been given across the UK since the vaccination programme began, but Scotland lags behind the rest of the country. On Monday, just 9.4 percent of over-18s had received a vaccine in Scotland, compared to almost 13 percent in England. 

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