Jury is out on Nicola’s superficial show trial

WHAT a loss to the law Nicola Sturgeon is. She’d have been great in a sheriff and jury trial in the Ayrshire rust belt, spinning on a stiletto heel to confront a witness: ‘You come here, with your record…’ like she does in First Minister’s Questions.

She’d be the sort of lawyer who has a dozen paralegals do the spadework, reads their report on the steps of the court and dazzles the jury with a bravura presentation – and has no concern for the truth of the case.

I take it that when our First Minister read Law at Glasgow University, Latin was still required so solicitors could tell their actus reus from their ex officio. She may grasp, then, the motto of North Carolina – Esse quam videri. It means: ‘To be, rather than to seem to be’ and that’s a lofty standard.

How difficult to be a good First Minister, rather than a mere style-over-substance one. How difficult to be a good government, rather than only appearing competent. Over their decade in power, Miss Sturgeon and the SNP have failed this ‘Carolina test’.

Take the belated admission that oil revenues were no mere bonus but a key plank of the 2014 independence manifesto. Miss Sturgeon spread that ‘bonus’ myth. Anyone who dared question the SNP economic blueprint got a lecture and that wee head shake she does when she’s fair ragin’. But it was an act based on a skim of briefing papers – and they were wrong.

We saw it on Named Persons, the scheme to let the state jemmy the door of family homes to install a snooper. Miss Sturgeon’s briefing said the scheme would not be universal, so out she went delivering the line with aplomb. The truth is, NP hinges on its ubiquity.

When the party leader offers a veneer of competence and moves only on the word of spin doctors, the rest follow suit. If Finance Secretary Derek Mackay were a lawyer, he’d trip over his gown. His tax figures are out by £2.8billion. This is the big leagues, not council amateur hour and you are out of your depth.

Shona Robison feigns competence as Health Secretary by generating reports. As she ‘brings forward plans’ OAPs die marooned on wards and people only see their GP at the golf club dinner-dance.

TRANSPORT Secretary Humza Yousaf pretends he’s working on Something Big – nationalisation of the trains or the return of corporation buses. Hard to be have faith, though, in a man who can’t organise car insurance and who tweets about Syria while commuters pay a high price for a miserable schlep to work.

The intellectual sterility of the SNP is its biggest problem. Its one idea – independence – is its sole answer to everything. Rather than tackle the crippling £15billion deficit – it would take unprecedented feats of fiscal brilliance to avoid savage cuts and terrifying tax hikes – the spin is that the figure is not so high.

Facts must not sully the SNP façade. The intractable currency question? There’ll be a report on that along soon, soothe the spin doctors.

Latin scholars have a phrase for this waffle – vox nihili. It means voice of nothing; a useless phrase.

Guilty as charged, Miss Sturgeon.