The Holyrood Election: think about how it works in football … it isn’t rocket science How does Boris Johnson keep his job? How do the Conservatives remain in power? The UK has suffered 127,597 deaths from Covid-19 (John Hopkins University, Covid-19 Dashboard, 22nd April, 2021); and in consequence the second highest cumulative excess death rate in Europe for 2020; second only to Bulgaria (BMJ 2021;372:n799; 23rd March, 2021). Ten years of Conservative government austerity has had a catastrophic impact on the UK’s capacity to respond effectively to a pandemic, in spite of Britain being distinct in Europe as an island (like Taiwan, New Zealand and other island communities that have fared much, much better), naturally gifted with a capacity to control its borders more effectively than continental states. At the same time, Public Health resources in the UK were depleted by long-term austerity, as well as the NHS capacity to respond to an epidemic, in spite of clear warnings to Government that a pandemic was likely, and a clear demonstration in 2016 that the UK was ill-equipped to respond (Operation Cygnus). Instead of good government, there has been a failure to institute rigorous travel restrictions or properly supported quarantine regulations, while lockdowns have been erratically implemented in England; typified by being too slow to begin, or ended too early; and accompanied by confusing public messaging. The government, ‘ex nihilo’ created a new private sector Test and Trace operation (by-passing the highly competent public health services which possessed a long established, effective track record in managing epidemics and pandemics) purely for ideological reasons within Government, and created at a cost of £37Bn, an operation which has failed even to demonstrate it has produced any substantive benefits at all (see parliament.uk: ‘COVID-19: Test, track and trace (part 1)’, 10th March, 2021). Even the Conservative Party daily PR journal, the ’Daily Telegraph’ went further in an article by Andrew Orlowski (3rd January, 2021), beginning with this comment: “NHS Test and Trace, with over £40bn spent or committed, is one of the most expensive public schemes ever undertaken, consuming as much money as the annual defence budget. Yet ministers were warned by leading epidemiologists that inefficiencies in the system would render it useless at inhibiting the spread of Covid 19 ….”. The list of gratuitous, self-inflicted failure by this Conservative Government is endless.