A BROKEN RECORD
In her five years as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t stopped talking about independence – at the expense of promised priorities including education and the health service. Will her gamble on giving Corbyn the keys to No 10 be her last?
Five years ago – and uncontested – Nicola Sturgeon won the SNP leadership, and days later became First Minister of Scotland. And in less than a month we will see the results of a General election in which Miss Sturgeon is playing for high and dangerous stakes.
Within her own party, sharks already circle, ready to seize on yet further SNP reverse – and the dashing of second referendum hopes – as an opportunity to depose her.
Five years is a long time to command any administration, on top of Sturgeon’s seven preceding years in high-profile office and alongside two decades as an MSP. And in fluid, turbulent times and amidst the pressures of 24/7 media, the modern politician has a distinct shelf-life.
Margaret Thatcher might have won three elections and the Cold War, but her MPs still overthrew her. Gordon Brown’s premiership fundamentally failed because, by the time he attained it, we were exhausted at the cheerless sight of him.
even breezy David Cameron finally outstayed his welcome.
Sturgeon has lasted so long because she was part of a generation of young idealists who rose in the Scottish National Party together, and in the closest bonds of friendship, through the 1990s and when it ran nothing but Angus District Council.
IT WAS no vehicle for ambition and, when Alex Salmond finally steered them into government, Swinney, Sturgeon, Hyslop and the rest proved an extraordinarily united team, free of infighting or faction, loath to brief against each other.
Yet it was Sturgeon who by the autumn of 2014 had emerged as what the Americans would dub the ‘prohibitive nominee’ – so obviously Salmond’s natural successor that no one dared to stand against her.
History teaches us that leaders who emerge by uncontested coronation rarely prosper. Chamberlain and eden, Brown and May all made No 10 by acclaim – and we could argue long as to which proved the worst Premier in modern history.
in the wake of the September 2014 referendum defeat, the SNP badly needed a long, cathartic debate about the nature of independence, about such hostages to fortune as Salmond’s commitment to the pound, about – especially – the european Union. (Several heads of government had made plain their antipathy to an independent Scotland.)
Thanks to Sturgeon, no such discussion has ever happened – and that is central to the quiet crisis now engulfing her.
Sturgeon is interesting because she is not of striking ability. She has not the intellect, never mind the curiosity, of a Roy Jenkins or a Michael Gove.
She is also, for a professional politician, strikingly shy, especially around journalists.
At 49, she has climbed as far as she has because of a Stakhanovite appetite for sheer hard work, iron selfdiscipline and a rare capacity to stand outside herself and see what needs to change.
Though Sturgeon would detest the comparison, there are striking parallels with Margaret Thatcher. Both were of provincial working-class background, both made it to the top – against long odds – and both dramatically reinvented themselves.
The Sturgeon of 1999 was the scowling ‘Nippy Sweetie’ of tabloid mockery who looked as if she never had time to shop – brutal trouser-suits, hideous shoes, heavy brows and a hairdon’t straight out of Prisoner: Cell Block H.
instead of railing against the cruel sexism of such coverage, Sturgeon calmly took expert counsel, deliberately softening her image and building the wardrobe that suits her best.
Now, with deft maquillage, well-chosen jewellery and accessories and her beloved Totty Rocks two-pieces, the consummate professional politician has long looked the part. She has also taught herself to smile – a lot, at every opportunity – and has worked hard on her voice, in a new genial tone and with the frequent hiccupy chuckle that betrays the influence of Alex Salmond.
There comparisons with Thatcher fade. The iron Lady was never mentored and was no one’s protegee.
NiCOLA Sturgeon owes almost everything to Alex Salmond, to the extent that she has consumed much mental and emotional energy since 2014 in determinedly distancing herself from him and, even now, living in some fear of his comeback.
Two things, early in her Scottish parliament career, served to undermine Sturgeon’s confidence. One was her sustained difficulty in winning a constituency of her own. Though twice parachuted onto the benches as a regional-list MSP, it took her three cracks (and four, if you count her first 1997 outing, for Westminster) to capture Glasgow Govan.
She was also damaged by her first bid, in 2004, for the SNP leadership. in the end she cut a fiendish deal with Alex Salmond and withdrew at almost the last moment – thus ruthlessly denying Roseanna Cunningham, ahead in the race by a country mile, time instead to secure nominations for (and thus retain) the deputy leadership.
it is said that the two women, hitherto fond of evenings out at Glasgow’s Rogano, did not speak for years. And we saw it again – that splinter of ice at Sturgeon’s core – when, on the eve of the last general election, she betrayed details of a private conversation with the then-Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale.
it shocked because Sturgeon is, to unusual degree in her line of work, a very nice woman.
She never, ever gossips spitefully against a colleague. She is as at ease with cleaners, crofters and tea-ladies as with college principals or heads of government.
Sturgeon, too, can laugh at herself. During the 2015 general election, for instance, one paper ran a faintly desperate story about how, as a little girl, the first Minister had mutilated her sister’s dolls. Sturgeon detonated it with simple humour: ‘i’m not proud of it... but i’ve changed. My nieces have never come to any harm.’
it was yet another instance of her mastery of twitter – and Sturgeon really does type all her own tweets, ‘though never,’ she points out primly, ‘after a glass of wine’.
When it emerged late in 2016, too, that she had in 2011 lost an unborn child – Sturgeon married Peter Murrell, SNP chief executive, in 2010 – it made her seem all the more human.
BUt the SNP tsunami in that 2015 election – being only the second party in the age of universal suffrage to win an absolute majority of the Scottish vote and 56 of the 59 seats – proved troublesome.
it whipped up SNP activists to new heights of indyref2 dementia and, as the SNP had been most late adopting Westminster candidates, vetting was not what it should have been: several new MPs brought serious embarrassment.
Worse, that triumph set an extraordinarily high bar and, though the Nationalists have continued to win national elections, there has since been some air of disappointment.
in May 2016, for instance, the SNP failed to secure another overall majority at Holyrood, leaving them dangerously reliant on the whims of the Scottish Greens. and in 2017 – the worse, for no one saw it coming – they lost 21 seats in the House of Commons. Not a few SNP survivors clung on by tiny majorities. None, anywhere, secured more than 40 per cent of the poll.
fewer Scots, in fact, voted SNP in that election than had turned out for Leave a year earlier, making Sturgeon’s ongoing political choices since all the more baffling. But that is founded on two realities. for one, since it first came to power, the SNP has greatly changed. Sturgeon personifies one important aspect of that: this is no longer a movement whose centre of gravity is the northeast Lowlands, all pretty market towns and cosy fishing-ports.
the SNP now looks (and sounds) much more like a party of Glasgow, the Central Belt and middle-class suburbia and, even were it still not railing for independence, this alone would have opened up new political space for the revived Scottish Conservatives.
it is also a far bigger party. When Sturgeon first tilted for its command in 2004, there were fewer than 10,000 signed-up members. today, SNP membership is bigger than that of the British army.
Many – one thinks of Jeane freeman, or communications chief tom french – are right johnnycome-latelys, having been most recently active in other political outfits. Many have come not from principle, but for power.
the consequences have been twofold. Historically, the SNP was very hostile to what is now the european Union. Only from the mid-eighties did it slide into a pragmatic regard for it. Since 2016, that europhilia has become fanatical and to the point of delirium.
the mass of new SNP activists, too, have a broader agenda – one we might frankly damn as ‘cultural Marxism’.
they are the same sort of people, blinkered, bourgeois and selfrighteous, who now command the broadcast media, arts, universities and most professions. they are anti-church, anti-family, rabidly europhile, ardent internationalists, convinced we are amidst a climate emergency, clamouring for – for instance – legalised ‘assisted dying’ and transgender rights; and for whom the monarchy, the late British empire and the Christian faith are eponymous with all that is wrong.
they are not comfortable with free speech, believe people who hold the wrong opinions should be ‘cancelled’ and that every arm of the State may be used to reeducate and, if necessary, compel us all to do their bidding.
Nicola Sturgeon has always had an odd blind spot about faith, not having one. Discovering that a fellow MSP, the late Brian adam, donated a tenth of his income to his church, she snapped: ‘You ought to get your priorities right.’
this is how we ended up with Nationalist MPs first being ordered to vote en masse against the return of fox-hunting in england – breaking a cardinal tenet, that they only vote on matters pertaining to their own constituents – and, in September, rushing to impose samesex marriage and legal abortion on the people of Northern ireland.
But, in truth, this is not leadership: this is a hostage situation. and there are mounting signs that the first Minister’s authority is slipping. Some colleagues are already on manoeuvres. Joanna Cherry makes little secret of her ultimate ambition. and, insufferable as he seems in the Commons, ian Blackford is making a serious name for himself in Westminster.
angus robertson is eyeing up edinburgh Central in a bid for a Holyrood career; nor, even now, can alex Salmond – who awaits trial on grave criminal charges – be overlooked either. the former first Minister denies all wrongdoing.
it is no secret that Sturgeon wanted an October general election and that her MPs refused to listen to her. they now face a midwinter poll, just as perilous for an edinburgh government as a London one – and on a strategy of extraordinary recklessness.
Yet again, overawed by her base, Sturgeon has made this an election about independence, stupidly shackling the possibility of a referendum onto a putative, minority Labour government.
increasingly we sense a tin ear. Scots, if anything, feel more ‘voted out’ than Brenda from Bristol after a blizzard of polls and plebiscites.
Does Sturgeon really believe, after the recent bitterness and gridlock, that we want to spend 2020 having yet more referendums even as Magic Grandpa and his Marxist retinue rapidly reduce us to Venezuela?
Just as the Scottish tories seemed on the ropes after ruth Davidson quit, they can now joyously muster the Unionist vote as tens of thousands more recoil from political parties that might conceivably usher a man like Jeremy Corbyn into power.
Nor – let us face it – can Sturgeon campaign on her record. Schools, hospitals and our policing are all visibly worse after five years of her reign. as for the educational reforms she insisted in 2016 would be her ‘absolute priority’, she cut and ran the moment the eiS arched its back and hissed.
then there was Named Person: oh, dear. this classic ‘cultural Marxist’ endeavour (for what do ordinary parents know about anything?) was flattened by the Supreme Court after much waste of time and money.
Sturgeon’s Scotland is a realm where desperately needed new ferries, promised for service last year, are still on the stocks in Port Glasgow – and she cannot even balance the books: an independent Scotland would start out with a £12.6billion deficit.
Nor have any of the fundamentals that cost the SNP the 2014 referendum been addressed – our currency, the ‘lender of last resort’, the averred ease of our accession to the eU. and then, of course, there is that upcoming trial, and all that may emerge.
Small wonder that, for months now, there have been persistent rumours of some prominent international role being lined up – in retirement – for Nicola Sturgeon.
the sort of talk, once it has begun, that is very hard to stop.
This is not leadership: this is a hostage situation