Alcohol deaths and plummeting life expectancy have seen the SNP’s Scotland compared to a Third World nation.
Writing for the Daily Mail, Andrew Neil claimed the grim situation has left Scotland the “Dying Man of Europe”.
Recent figures have found that Scots are dying earlier than ever, despite already having the lowest expectancy rates in the UK.
Data from the National Records of Scotland has revealed that men from the home nation live to an average of 76.52 years, while women live to 80.73.
While alcohol deaths have hit a high not seen since 2008, with thousands of people dying per year from drink-related causes.
In his regular column, Mr Neil said the “stark” figures show a widening birth between rich and poor, and England and Scotland.
He said: “Over the past 16 years in which Scotland has been in the SNP’s tender care, Scottish life expectancy has not just remained the lowest in Britain (and western Europe), it has got worse.”
Data shows the average Englishman lives to 79.9 years, while women live to 83.6 – three years more than their Scot neighbours.
The numbers in England are comparable to those in affluent Scottish communities such as Bearsden, a Glasgow suburb where the average home is worth more than £300,000.
There, men live to 83.26 on average, while in Springburn, a deprived area in Glasgow’s centre where homes are worth just over £93,000, they died aged 71.1, on average.
The figures are lower than between 2013 and 2015 when male life expectancy reached 77.1, a historic peak.
Women reached their expectancy peak between 2017 and 2019 when they were living to an average of 81.1.
Mr Neil highlighted that the figures in Glasgow as a whole were 79.2 years for men, “only a tad more” than in Syria, where the average is 72.14 years.
He said “[It} is quite incredible when you think about it. But drill down further and the figures are even more appalling.”
Alcohol deaths follow a similar trend, with the number having reached a level not seen in 15 years.
Official figures show 1,245 people died from alcohol-related causes in 2021, an increase of 25 percent compared to 2019.
In 2008, just over 1,200 people were reported to have died from these similar causes.
Mr Neil said: “It’s a dismal record after 16 years of SNP rule and a grim legacy for anybody who has to take over. It’s a depressing prospect for all Scots, at home and abroad.”
“Perhaps ‘Vote SNP and die three years early’ is not so much a sick joke as the best the SNP will be able to put before voters.
“It’s already been criticised for presiding over the Sick Man of Europe. But never in our worst moments did anybody think the SNP would turn Scotland into the Dying Man of Europe. Yet, somehow, that is what it has managed to achieve.”
