Edinburgh's King's Theatre needs millions for refurbishment. But in SNP land, nothing is ever their fault – John McLellan

To borrow a phrase, it’s a bit rich of the SNP to demand that Edinburgh Council borrow a further £4.5m to help fund the King’s Theatre refurbishment when it was responsible for decisions which helped create the current crisis in the first place.

The council is already providing a £4m grant and a £5m loan facility, and even at the preferential rates public authorities enjoy it will not be cheap to borrow more in these days of high interest. The King’s modernisation programme is now estimated to cost £35.6m and the clock is ticking to close a gap of £9m, but more would have been available had money not been re-budgeted to cover payroll problems caused by the pandemic, and £1m not been diverted to the Leith Theatre renovation project.

Not that these weren’t necessary decisions, but beneath it all is the continued stripping of resources from local authorities by the SNP-led Scottish Government. Instead, there was an SNP councillor, desperately trying to look cool with a baseball hat on back to front, standing in front of the King’s to film himself blaming Brexit and the evil Tories for problems at a theatre which has been the responsibility of SNP politicians for the past 15 years.

Rather than saddling council taxpayers with extra debt and then attacking the UK Government in the same breath as demanding more cash, shouldn’t the local SNP be demanding that their own people sort it out? But then again, in Nat-land nothing is ever their fault.