Sturgeon sparks backlash over leak
‘Gutter politics’ blast at Sturgeon Dugdale denies Indyref 2 claims Davidson hits out at TV ‘clype’
NICOLA Sturgeon was yesterday accused of ‘gutter politics’ as she faced a backlash over her decision to disclose private details of a conversation with her political rival Kezia Dugdale.
The First Minister was branded a ‘clype’ after claiming in a live television debate the Scottish Labour leader said her party could drop its opposition to an independence referendum following Brexit.
Miss Dugdale yesterday attempted to fight back by claiming that Miss Sturgeon had told a ‘categoric lie’ which ‘diminishes her office’.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson said the sorry episode shows that the SNP is ‘rattled’ ahead of the election – and that Labour cannot be trusted to stand up for the Union.
Miss Sturgeon insisted that she was ‘certain’ that her description of the phone conversation – which happened shortly after she held a press conference declaring that an independence referendum is ‘on the table’ following the Brexit result – is accurate.
But Miss Dugdale said: ‘We didn’t talk about independence or an independence referendum.’
She also said ‘any suggestion we had a conversation about independence or another referendum is a categoric lie’.
She added: ‘I do remember us having a conversation, being upset about the result of the EU referendum and we talked entirely about what would happen next with regards to Europe.’
Miss Dugdale was unable to answer questions about the timing of the call, precise details of what was said, whether it happened before or after Miss Sturgeon’s Bute House speech or who had initiated it.
However, she insisted that an independence referendum was not mentioned.
She accused Miss Sturgeon of only disclosing details of the conversation to damage Labour’s hopes in the election.
She said: ‘It does diminish her office, it’s the First Minister of Scotland, this is gutter politics at its very worst. And you’ve got to question the motivations behind it. Why in the final hours of the election campaign is she seeking to attack me personally and drag people towards the Tories?
‘Is it perhaps because she wants Theresa May to stay exactly where she is because that helps her further the case for independence.’
Miss Davidson also attacked Miss Sturgeon for disclosing details of a private conversation.
She said: ‘I have thought an awful lot of things about Nicola Sturgeon in the past few years but I never thought she was a clype and I never thought she was a woman you couldn’t have a private conversation with – but I know now.’
She said that the details of the conversation show that Labour ‘can’t be trusted on the Union’.
Miss Davidson added: ‘I think the SNP and the First Minister are rattled because they are seeing the hegemony that they manage to create, and that what was a very good result for them in 2015, is crumbling.
‘I said last year after they lost their majority in the Scottish parliament that peak Nat has passed and you don’t have to trust an opinion poll to get a sense out there that, again, there could be losses for them.’
Miss Davidson also said that she was sure Prime Minister Theresa May would always ensure there was an official in the room when she speaks to Miss Sturgeon so that she does not leave herself ‘open to this kind of tittle tattle’.
During First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Miss Sturgeon said she only released details of the conversation because Miss Dugdale had already provided a ‘selective account’ of the discussion to a newspaper earlier this year.
She said she stood ‘100 per cent’ behind her claim that Miss Dugdale had directly referred to considering dropping her party’s opposition to an independence referendum.
She added: ‘I say to Kezia Dugdale that I know what was said in that conversation, and so does she. I am standing here in the chamber of the Scottish parliament and I am certain of what was said.’ Miss Sturgeon’s spokesman said that the conversation happened in the afternoon following the First Minister’s Bute House press conference about the Brexit result.
Following the conversation, Miss
‘SNP and the First Minister are rattled’
Sturgeon is said to have told a ‘handful’ of her advisers about Miss Dugdale’s views.
Sources close to the First Minister confirmed that they had discussed mentioning the issue before the television debate.
One source said: ‘It was an option discussed. It’s been on her mind for months.’ Regarding Miss Dugdale’s claim that the First Minister had lied about the conversation, Miss Sturgeon’s spokesman said: ‘If people think the First Minister is in the business of inventing fantasy conversations with Kezia Dugdale… nobody really believes that.’
A GLITTERING future built on the solid foundations of a glorious past. That is the vision Prime Minister Theresa May maps out for Britain in this newspaper today as we go to the polls.
There is a steel about Mrs May sadly lacking in too many politicians who opt for glib promises and soundbites that are so much easier to deliver than the unvarnished truth. Mrs May has made no bones about the scale of the task we face as we extricate ourselves from the EU.
Tough decisions, sacrifices perhaps, will have to be made. But the end result will be worth the effort.
Mrs May is also fully aware that unity at this difficult time is paramount. She alone has been consistent in her pledge to protect and indeed strengthen the Union.
Compare that with the SNP and Labour, whose key figures in Scotland spent the final day of campaigning fighting like ferrets in a sack.
Nicola Sturgeon revealed – live on TV in a leaders’ debate – details of a private conversation with Kezia Dugdale.
Regardless of whether her account of Miss Dugdale saying Labour could ditch its opposition to a second independence referendum is accurate – the Labour leader insists it is not – the furore is revelatory.
It shows Miss Sturgeon to be a woman who will stoop to any level, play any dirty trick, for political advantage.
Private conversations stay that way only until confidences can be shattered to boost the SNP. How very shabby.
Meanwhile, Miss Dugdale and Labour are utterly inconsistent on the key question of protecting the Union.
Miss Dugdale insists the party stands solidly behind the Union. Then Jeremy Corbyn, one opportunistic eye on using Nationalist MPs to install him as PM at the head of a coalition of chaos, speaks out.
He was, he said, ‘relaxed’ about talking to the SNP about another referendum.
Well, this metropolitan Marxist might be unperturbed. But millions of Scots facing the nightmare prospect of another round of constitutional unpleasantness and the spectre of the shambles of independence most certainly are not.
Where the SNP and Labour are united is on ruinous tax-and-spend policies that would hammer hard-working families and bleed businesses white.
They talk of ending austerity but their plans come down to a magic money tree paying for it all. It is as dangerous as it is deluded.
In complete contrast, Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Tories are determined to lower the tax burden on workers and companies to grow the economy.
Tory MPs sent south will battle behind Mrs May to deliver the best possible Brexit deal for all of the UK.
Not for them the childish antics of the feeble 56 Nationalist MPs who engaged in little more than an extended series of childish stunts since 2015.
And they will form a bulwark against an SNP still obsessing about independence, still straining every sinew to shatter the UK, not to make it a better place to live and work and raise children.
In the face of a clear Tory surge, a rattled SNP has tried to hide its independence mania and has fallen back on outdated antiTory rhetoric.
The choice in Scotland this morning is clear: On one hand there is the self-centred SNP, beholden to its separatist zealots. It offers nothing but division and chaos.
It sides with a Labour Party with a hodgepodge of fiscally illiterate policies, headed by Comrade Corbyn, rendered unfit for high office by his fondness for terrorists.
And then there is Ruth Davidson’s Tories, determined to get government working for the people, to help the ambitious and hardworking and to back to the hilt Mrs May’s crusade to make Britain stronger, safer and more prosperous by seizing the opportunities Brexit affords.