The SNP has been accused of using Donald Trump tactics to avoid apologising over their use of misleading wind power statistics for the last decade.
We previously told how it had been revealed that Scottish Government ministers and other prominent Nats had been using a renewable figure that had not been properly sourced for years.
They had claimed that Scotland has 25 per cent of Europe’s off-shore wind power potential. But analysis from pro-union think tank These Islands found that the figure is actually likely to be about six per cent.
And in their bombshell report, they found that civil servants had known about this for years but SNP ministers still spouted the same line.
It was used all the way up until last week, when Scottish Greens co-leader and junior government minister Lorna Slater repeated it in a newspaper column.
The government finally admitted to it being “out-of-date” publicly on Tuesday at Holyrood when Ms Slater was trotted out to answer a topical question about it.
But her refusal to apologise for using it, as well as the SNP’s silence on it so far, has led to accusations that they had adopted Donald Trumps “alternative facts” policy of governing the country.
Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton made this comparison following Ms Slater’s “hapless” performance at the Scottish Parliament.
He wrote that the SNP had now adopted the “post-truth world” of the former American President in a column for Edinburgh Evening News.
Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “It was Kellyanne Conway, one-time senior counsel and pollster to Donald Trump, who introduced the world to the concept of “alternative facts”. I say facts but they’re famous because they were actually fabrications, used to deflect or justify the agenda of the Trump administration.
“In the smoke and mirrors of the Trump White House, it actually described pretty well what the administration was dishing out on a daily basis. Alternative facts are outright lies.
“It was perhaps wishful thinking that the post-truth world of Donald Trump wouldn’t take hold in Scotland, but it has. In fact, the SNP could actually teach ‘The Donald’ a thing or two.” Read more:
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