It's good that debate has moved on from whether Scotland is currently doing better on COVID (hard to deny) to why.
And it's true that this is a complex issue - some factors favouring Scotland, some favouring England.
But there's one telling reason why Government action is key...

The geographic and demographic factors are important. Take population density. While Scotland is actually slightly more urban than England with only 17% of the population rural (see https://www.gov.scot/publications/rural-scotland-key-facts-2018/pages/2/), English cities are generally more dense than Scottish cities.

So, London has 5,700 people per square km, Glasgow only 3,400. That is important for infection transmission. Equally, London gets more visitors than Glasgow eeven accounting for size - although overall Scotland gets far more visitors per head of population than England

We could argue long and hard about the impact of these factors on relative COVID figures, and invoke others besides (health disparities, for instance - Scotland has appreciably more over-weight people than England). But (and this is the big but...)

These stay pretty constant through the pandemic. If they were producing the differences in infection rate between England and Scotland, that too would stay constant throughout the pandemic. It doesn't. Early on Scotland was doing as badly as England. Only now is it doing better.

So we need something that changed to explain the change in relative performance. As I have always stressed Scotland has been far from perfect. Early on, many mistakes were made on lockdown, on testing and above all on care homes (as last nights harrowing documentary showed).

That's why, early on, Scotland was one of the worst countries in Europe while now it is one of the best. It is why, overall, the death rates in Scotland are not far shy of those in England. But then something changed.

On May the 10th, as the UK moved to a confused 'stay alert' message, Scotland kept a clear 'stay home' message. From then, Scotland gradually elaborated a clear elimination strategy with cautious policiees and clear messaging.

England expressed no clear policies. There was apparent acceptance of continuing infections in the thousands per week. There was a rush for 'feelgood' headlines like 'Super Saturday'. Employers and the public were left alone to deeal with the pandemic.

The improvement of the figures in Scotland compared to England clearly coincides with the emerging contrast between a systematic COVID elimination strategy in Holyrood and drift, dither and blether in Westminster. That is extremely telling.

Correlation is not causation. But Scotland's actions in maintaining distancing measures and early introduction of masks are known to reduce infeection transmission and the greater trust in the Scottish Government (some 3/4 compared to a little over 1/3) relates to compliance.

Moreover, it is hard to think of any other shift between Scotland and England in the relevant time period which could explain the recent divergence in COVID performance. The bottom line, then is this:

You cannot explain a change in the Scotland-England COVID performance through a constant Scottish-English difference.
So geography and demography cannot explain current Scottish rates being better than English rates.
Zero COVID strategy in Scotland can.

And let me stress I say this not to celebrate the difference but to eliminate it.
I want England to adopt a Zero COVID strategy and start to do just as well as Scotland.
I want no avoidable COVID infections and deaths in England, Scotland or anywhere else.