Sturgeon is happy to smear and betray. Can anybody trust her?

IT was a low blow by a desperate woman; the most electrifying point in the final Scottish leaders’ debate of this General Election – the moment when Nicola Sturgeon exposed Kezia Dugdale’s private wobbliness on another independence poll; a choice, as the First Minister put it, between an independent Scotland and a hard Brexit.

‘You used to agree with me on that,’ grated Sturgeon. ‘You and I spoke the day after the EU referendum and you told me then that you thought the change with Brexit meant that Labour should stop opposing a referendum.’

As jaws dropped the length of the land, Ruth Davidson could barely believe her ears. ‘Did you just tell people you had a private conversation with Kez Dugdale last June where she said she was going to drop Labour’s opposition to independence?’

‘She said that she thought that Brexit changed everything,’ insisted the First Minister, ‘and that she didn’t think Labour could any longer go on opposing a second independence referendum.

‘She was entitled to change her mind… but what I don’t think any politician is entitled to do is to deny people in Scotland a choice about their own future.’

Dugdale, too shocked to make a coherent denial in immediate response, has since insisted Sturgeon’s assertion is ‘absolute nonsense… a categoric lie’. It matters little. The pin has been pulled, the grenade has been hurled and no one, one suspects, will be more damaged when all is counted than Sturgeon.

It was, we gather, no spur-of-themoment thing – a stressed, excited First Minister who ‘misspoke’ in a moment’s haste. It was calculated; the line discussed with her team as they prepared for Tuesday night’s debate.

And that does not just make its cynical use the more wicked – and it was wicked, as ruthless as it was inexcusable – it makes it the more extraordinary.

For it made absolutely no political sense. Suggesting that Dugdale might not, after all, utterly oppose independence will scarcely benefit the SNP. Scottish Labour is already reduced to a Unionist rump.

STURGEON’S outrage, in fact, is truly a gift to the Scottish Conservatives – and the Tories are the most dangerous electoral threat to the Nationalists. Why help them corral yet more of Scotland’s Unionist vote on the eve of an election when the SNP is on the defensive. When, thanks to Sturgeon’s follies, the party is (incredibly) less popular now than independence itself. When such Nationalist stalwarts as Pete Wishart and Angus Robertson are in the fight of their lives to stay in the Commons?

What did the First Minister think she was playing at? And something still more devastating may have happened. Sturgeon – especially in contrast to Alex Salmond – has always been thought straightforward, personable, free of malice, disinclined to gossip and someone you could trust.

As one observer put it, in a certain political fix: ‘Nicola would always go for the deal because it made sense. Alex would always choose to fight – because it was more fun.’ In the last general election two years ago – when then Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael tried to leak an averred Sturgeon indiscretion – no one protested and postured more righteously than the First Minister, not least on the enormity of broken confidences.

It is hard to look at Sturgeon in so benign a light now. If Dugdale did not share those views with her, in a private telephone conversation last year, then the First Minister on Tuesday night was lying. If Dugdale did – and it was probably little more than thinking aloud – it was a grotesque breach of trust and, crucially, a betrayal of trust between two women.

‘She pulled the lowest card from the dirty-tricks pack and plays it live on TV,’ lamented one observer. ‘It almost doesn’t matter what Kez said in that conversation – it was a private chat and that’s how it should have stayed.’

Davidson, sensing by later yesterday that Sturgeon was becoming the story, put it deftly. Mocking the First Minister as a ‘clype’, she added: ‘I would expect Theresa May will ensure there’s always an official in the room when she meets Nicola Sturgeon.’

In the months since the EU referendum, and especially this year, we have all started to wonder about the First Minister. She has seemed less and less sure-footed. There has been evident political miscalculation. Scots did not, in fact, surge for independence in the wake of Britain’s Brexit vote.

Despite insisting education would be the ‘defining priority’ of this Scottish parliament, Sturgeon has seemed to talk about nothing but the constitution – and Holyrood has passed no legislation of any note in more than a year.

THEN, weeks after unveiling her plans for that second independence referendum, Sturgeon was quite wrong-footed when May called this interminable election.

Neither the First Minister nor her party have regained their balance. Theirs has been the most muddled Nationalist campaign in years, with no defining slogan and a general, uneasy sense they are going to take a hit. Several Nationalist MPs who cleared their Westminster desks a few weeks ago know, in their hearts, they will not be coming back.

This is not 1979, when Nationalist MPs fell like the clans at Culloden. The SNP will win this election in Scotland. But there are going to be losses, the odd notable casualty and a sharp check in Nationalist momentum – with no further electoral opportunity in sight to change the narrative before the next Holyrood poll. By tomorrow, Nationalists will at last – at least privately – accept they have a leader of poor judgment and questionable competence (and with no obvious stand-out successor).

But, after Tuesday’s poisonous incident, they must also grasp they have a leader who, especially under pressure, can be unscrupulous. That she will use any political advantage she can. That she will cheat and smear and betray.

Were you one of her constituents, would you now feel entirely secure about confiding in Sturgeon about something very sensitive and personal?

Amidst the deals done between parties at Holyrood – where the SNP runs a minority administration – could MSPs absolutely trust her? If you command a significant Scottish business, how readily might you now share secrets with the First Minister at one of those evening functions for the great and good?

Every election night brings surprises – and upsets and defeats. There will certainly be Scottish casualties. But, even before a ballot has been counted, it is hard not to feel that, already, the biggest is Nicola Sturgeon’s reputation.