Co-operate? Sturgeon is a no-mercy, shin-kicking street fighter
THERE was a rare treat at First Minister’s Questions: the First Minister decided to turn up. Nicola Sturgeon skipped Tuesday’s Covid update to be at Cop26.
A cynic might observe that Sturgeon has no formal role at Cop, but following Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail with a saltire in one hand and a cameraphone in the other isn’t a job so much as a personal crusade. In hindsight, she should probably have stayed in Glasgow updating her selfie collection.
Douglas Ross was Mr Sobriety, all carefully calibrated language and calm, even delivery.
He wasn’t just getting his points across, he was telegraphing the seriousness gap between himself and the First Minister on the issue. That issue was drugs deaths, where the SNP leader is susceptible to taking her ‘eye off the ball’.
‘Why did it take ten overdoses in a single prison to cut down on the supply of drugs in our prisons?’ he inquired.
The First Minister went to a familiar comfort zone: crossparty co-operation. Hence, ‘we are open to ideas, suggestions’, ‘I hope there is an appetite to build consensus’ and ‘I would hope that across this chamber we could come together’.
Nicola Sturgeon is a no-mercy, no-holds, shin-kicking street fighter. The only time she genuinely wants Holyrood to come together is for a right stooshie.
The faux-humility was a dodge. The Tories, and especially their chief crime-fighter Russell Findlay, have been bending the justice secretary’s ear for months now about drugs being smuggled into jails by soaking them into the paper that letters to inmates are written on.
(The worst thing they did in Prisoner: Cell Block H was make their own home brew.)
The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has decided that lags will be given only a photocopy of their post. That’s it for D Wing’s annual stamp-collecting contest... Why hadn’t they done so sooner?
The SPS, Sturgeon stressed, was ‘taking into account prisoners’ rights, which are often determined through court judgments’. To make matters worse, Ross had gotten his mitts on guidelines saying prisoners should be given the option of having drug-containing items ‘safely stored and returned to them on their release’.
Naturally. We wouldn’t want these drugs falling into the wrong hands.
‘Prisoners have rights,’ Sturgeon reiterated, ‘which are often upheld in courts of law.’ It was the second time she had deployed this devious formulation. To her left-liberal flank, it will have sounded as though she was taking a bold and progressive stance.
IN fact, she was sneakily shifting the blame for prisoners’ rights onto judges. Sturgeon’s a full-throated defender of human rights; it’s just that she comes over a little hoarse when the particulars risk making her unpopular. Douglas