Spaniel heads jerked and the yapping was mighty...
IF your mind boggles at some of the hypocritical bunkum the First Minister dispenses for the pleasure of the nodding spaniels behind her, there is an explanation.
It’s the IOWIDI Principle. It’s what governs most of Nicola Sturgeon’s political choices and affirms her actions even as it damns comparable actions by her opponents.
IOWIDI renders all critique and comparison pointless with its relentless, cheery illogic. IOWIDI: It’s Okay When I Do It.
The IOWIDI Principle was out in force at FMQs yesterday. Interim Tory leader Jackson Carlaw prayed why she would not support the Prime Minister’s latest proposal to solve Brexit with a deal on the Irish border.
‘We found out this week that Jackson Carlaw will vote for whatever Boris Johnson tells him to vote for,’ Sturgeon hooted. It wasn’t an answer to his question – when is it ever? – but, more obviously, it described exactly how the SNP operates. She tells her MPs and MSPs to vote this way or that, and they do, or at least they do if they don’t want to wake up to find the top half of Shergar hogging the duvet.
She continued: ‘I will not support something like that, because Scotland does not support that.’ The framework hasn’t been polled but Sturgeon could assert with confidence we were agin it.
This Scot Whisperer routine reflects the common SNP superstition that to be a Nationalist is to be in psychic commune with the entire nation and able to speak for them truths even they have yet to realise.
If you do this with lottery numbers at the end of Llandudno Pier, you get called a fortune teller. If you do it with public opinion at Holyrood, you get called First Minister. Again, though: Sturgeon’s political career is built around supporting something Scotland doesn’t support. She doesn’t even have to intuit this one; we held an entire referendum about it five years ago. But, remember: IOWIDI.
Carlaw roiled up against ‘further dither, delay and uncertainty’, which he claimed would be ‘much more damaging than getting the matter sorted now’. He tossed in a swipe at the First Minister for being ‘disgracefully open’ to putting Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the show. That’s the Sturgeon who’s forever on about Scotland having governments it didn’t vote for imposed on it and the Corbyn who attracted a whole 27 per cent of Scottish ballots in 2017.
Quoth the First Minister: ‘Jackson Carlaw has no credibility on this... He has gone from being an enthusiastic Remainer to a Boris Johnsonloving, No Deal Brexiteer in what seems like a heartbeat.’ This coming from Sturgeon, whose Brexit stance has shifted with her tactical calculations. After a listless effort in the referendum, she became a born-again Remainer, switched to Norway-plus, wouldn’t back a People’s Vote, then backed a People’s Vote, promised to oppose No Deal, then instructed her MPs to vote against a deal three times. She’s had more positions on the EU than it has member states.
CARLAW urged Westminster and Brussels to ‘continue their intensive discussions’. ‘When it comes to Boris Johnson’s proposals,’ the SNP leader fired back, ‘it is probably more a case of intensive care, rather than intensive discussions.’
If the First Minister’s jokes were any worse, BBC Scotland would have commissioned a pilot by now.
She said she wanted Scotland to have the choice of an ‘independent future’ and the spaniels’ heads jerked up and the yapping was mighty.
Things calmed down when Labour leader Richard Leonard enquired about Tayside mental health services. Sturgeon is full of vigour when waxing about separation but when she’s forced to talk about things that matter, things like mental health, she does so with the emotional warmth of a Dalek reading out an IKEA instructions manual. She’d reprove such priorities in anyone else but, of course: IOWIDI.