Yesterday SNP MP Stewart Hosie told Politics Live viewers that Scotland has a lower Covid prevalence than England. So smug were the SNP that their neighbours and closest friends south of the border were supposedly riddled with a quasi-deadly virus, they gleefully repeated this claim on their social media channels:

📺 Journalist @pollytoynbee praises Nicola Sturgeon for a more cautious Covid approach in Scotland, in contrast with Boris Johnson.

✅ Latest ONS data shows Covid is less prevalent in Scotland than England.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Get boosted, get tested, wear a mask - let's keep saving lives. pic.twitter.com/5jbaU4kBGq

— The SNP (@theSNP) January 6, 2022

There’s just one problem: despite Sturgeon’s love of restrictions, stricter rules, the closure of clubs and semi-lockdowns in other hospitality venues, their Covid prevalence stats are out of date.*

While the SNP cite ONS statistics, the government’s Covid dashboard spells a different picture for cases by nation for the last 7 days:

Not only does England have a lower prevalence than Scotland, it has the lowest prevalence of all four UK nations despite having almost no legal restrictions. The lockdown lovers always say they’re following the science… except when they aren’t.

*Previously this article said the SNP’s stats were untrue rather than out of date.

Reading from the Russia report in this morning’s Intelligence and Security Committee press conference, ISC member Stewart Hosie MP said:

“we saw that when we looking into allegations that Russia sought to influence voters in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Studies have pointed to the preponderance of pro-Brexit or anti-EU stories on RT and Sputnik, and the use of ‘bots’ and ‘trolls’. 

“The actual impact of any such attempts on the result itself – by which I mean did the disinformation change how people voted – would be difficult – if not impossible – to prove.”

More widely the report finds:

• “Russian influence in the UK is the new normal”
• Successive Governments have welcomed the oligarchs and their money with open arms, providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’, and connections at the highest levels with access to UK companies and political figures.
• PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money.
• Greater powers and transparency are needed urgently.
• Consideration should be given to Peers registering outside payments in the same way MPs do.
• The UK is clearly a target for Russian disinformation.
• No one Government organisation has considered itself to be in the lead or was willing to conduct an assessment of such interference.
• The mechanics of the UK’s paper-based voting system are largely sound.

The report calls on social media companies to “take action and remove covert hostile state material” and says the “Government must ‘name and shame’ those who fail to act.” Read the report in full here…