Sturgeon crown is under threat
NICOLA Sturgeon heads to the Granite City this weekend as suspicions grow that her once rock-solid rule over Scotland is crumbling. The First Minister takes her Scottish National Party to Aberdeen for an annual conference that should be a celebration of the five years in power she marks next month.
Yet around the bars and fringe meetings, much of the blether will be about whether the time has come for a new leader to spearhead the separatist cause.
This will have implications far south of the Scottish border, given her key role in the anti-Brexit “remain alliance” of opposition parties mustering to sabotage the UK’s departure from the EU.
Ms Sturgeon will have plenty to crow about when she delivers her keynote speech on Tuesday. Opinion polls suggest the spectacular Tory revival seen at the 2017 general election may have stalled, owing to Brexit jitters among some middle-class,Tory-leaning voters.
Ruth Davidson’s resignation as Scots Conservative leader has also removed a charismatic challenger for the First Minister’s job.
For all that, not all Scots Nationalists are content with Ms Sturgeon’s leadership. Many grassroots members are impatient with her cautious approach to the demand for a second Scottish independence referendum to try to overturn 2014’s 55 per cent to 45 per cent vote in favour of maintaining the Union.
WITH little sign of a surge in support for independence by the Scottish electorate, Ms Sturgeon has shied away from requesting a Section 30 order, the Scottish Parliament’s mechanism for triggering an independence poll. She is not expected to announce such a move in her conference speech.
Even more damaging, the First Minister has been overshadowed by a key rival to being Scotland’s most prominent Brexit saboteur.
Barrister Joanna Cherry, the ambitious SNP MP for Edinburgh South West, has spearheaded legal actions in the Scottish Courts and at the Supreme Court that have proved a major irritant to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts.
Ms Cherry has firm support BORIS Johnson can expect to be in unfamiliar surroundings next week attending his first EU Council summit for more than 20 years.
With the Brexit negotiations intensifying dramatically last night, the Prime Minister is scheduled to be in Brussels onThursday as the tortuous Article 50 departure process hurtles towards its conclusion.
Mr Johnson last attended an EU Council in his old job as a newspaper correspondent covering the machinations of the bloc’s bureaucracy in the early 1990s. Back then, European statesmen Jacques Chirac, who died last month, and Helmut Kohl were the among the SNP’s more hard-line wing opposed to the First Minister’s more gradualist approach. She is said to be emerging as a serious contender for the party leadership. dominant figures. The bizarre egg-shaped Europa summit building, where the gathering of European leaders will take place, was not even a glint in a lavishly-paid architect’s eye.
Still, with his experience of reporting on the infuriatingly drawn-out procedures of the EU elite, the Prime Minister may have some insight into the hours of tedium that await him.
If anything, meetings are now even more languid given the EU’s expansion, which has added more bodies to the room than on his last visit.
David Cameron’s recent memoir, ForThe Record, vividly captures the torpor of such Concern is also growing in SNP ranks at the Scottish Government’s woeful record in office.
Under Ms Sturgeon, Scotland’s budget deficit is seven times higher than the rest of the UK – despite cuts to public services. Health targets are routinely missed. Waiting times in accident and emergency units are worse than a year ago.
Literacy standards have fallen in Scottish schools. And this week, the Scottish Government pressed ahead with unpopular workplace car-parking charges.
THE First Minister has tried to divert attention from this disastrous record with Brexit scaremongering, her favourite pastime.
Such rhetoric may fail to wash with voters embittered by the daily experience of failing public services when they come to give their verdict on SNP rule in the UK-wide general election which is expected this winter.
Her emphasis on Brexit is also a double-edged weapon for a separatist leader. It risks raising uncomfortable questions about the reality of independence behind the nationalist pipe dream by potentially promising to lead Scotland out of a newly-independent UK and back into the EU.
Ms Sturgeon should savour the applause she will undoubtedly receive when rising to speak in Aberdeen. Like the grey skies that so often loom over the city, the outlook for her Scottish reign is not looking bright. gatherings. “Sometimes I would sit there and count how many people around the table were asleep,” the former prime minister wrote.
He recalled how the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy “would often be reading the French papers” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel “had to be told to turn the football down on her laptop because she’d forgotten to plug her headphones in”.
Mr Johnson has plenty of reasons to hope a Brexit deal is close at hand, not least because agreement could well mean his return to the EU Council onThursday will be the last time he has to attend such a dreary event. JOHN Bercow was back in a full voice last week after overcoming a cold that left him barely able to manage a croak. The Commons Speaker announced that he was “very grateful” to Labour MP Grahame Morris for “proffering me a very effective throat remedy”. Tory MPs would rather Mr Morris had kept his medicine to himself.
KEVIN Hollinrake brandished a bottle in the Commons on Monday during a debate about spirit duties. “I happen to have with me a bottle of Filey Bay, Yorkshire’s first [single malt] whisky,” the Conservative MP announced, adding: “It is from the Spirit of Yorkshire distillery in Hunmanby in my constituency.” Commons rules that ban MPs from using props appear to have been forgotten in the final weeks of Speaker Bercow’s stint.
SIR LINDSAY Hoyle has won Nigel Farage’s backing in the race to become the next Commons speaker. “Sir Lindsay Hoyle is the favourite and he has not ever told us which way he voted in the EU referendum,” the Brexit Party leader said of the current deputy speaker. He added: “It seems to me they are quite good credentials.”
MR FARAGE urged Brexit Party supporters to hush their booing at his mention of European President Jean-Claude Juncker during a rally in Watford on Thursday.
“I like Jean-Claude,” the Brexit Party leader told his audience. Referring to the cognac-guzzling Eurocrat, he added: “He’s the only person I know who makes me think I haven’t got a drink problem.”
EXTINCTION Rebellion’s climate protests at Westminster this week caused a paper shortage in Parliament. “The road blocks mean the delivery lorries have not been able to get through,” one Commons source said. The lack of paper meant printing of the daily Hansard reports of parliamentary proceedings was restricted. “House of Lords Hansard was the first to go,” the source added.
NOT everyone at Westminster was inconvenienced by the protests, however. Officials found scuttling between Whitehall departments and Parliament much easier with traffic absent due to the road closure. “It’s taken far less time to get around for meetings this week,” said one delighted Downing Street insider. Extinction Rebellion’s attempt to “shut down” Parliament appears to have been a flop.