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Populism is politically highly effective. The SNP have been masters of choosing which interests to placate and which to challenge. But when populism hits an immovable object like a pandemic, it has nowhere to go. The schools issue is probably the worst I've ever seen them cope. https://twitter.com/TheScotsman/status/1275720913942708225
There seem to be some basic hard facts here about the capacity of the schools estate, the financial resources available to councils, and the number of hours in a day and teachers to work them, that mean there are no good answers to the problems children and their parents face.
All of this makes it a moment for political honesty and openness, a moment to acknowledge what can't be done and try to recruit as many people as possible into the process of establishing what can be. Instead we've seen spin oscillating between worst and best case scenario plans.
In the end what happens in these sorts of unpredictable situations depends substantially on what is the driving purpose of your politics. And when it's something as orthogonal to normal political imperatives as independence, you can end up with no clear sense of direction at all.
