Was Nicola’s bow to the Queen just some royal spin?
IT was a scene to delight monarchists everywhere: there was Nicola Sturgeon standing alongside the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and what’s more, she was singing the National Anthem – on her own. The Queen doesn’t sing God Save the Queen – for obvious reasons – and neither does Prince Philip. Well, not very often anyway.
So when the Royal party paused for the anthem on Tweedbank Station last week, our First Minister was the only one who had to sing along.
Now, it is certainly true that Miss Sturgeon didn’t really give it laldy, as they say in her Glasgow constituency. Nor was there much in the way of volume or enthusiasm in her effort. But at least it looked as if she knew the words, which was something.
For political watchers, though, it was a seminal moment because we all remember what she was like in her early, radical days. Back when Miss Sturgeon was first elected to the Scottish parliament, the idea of actually standing alongside the Queen, of bowing and then singing the National Anthem would have brought her out in hives.
This was the radical young MSP, don’t forget, who boycotted a visit by the Queen to Holyrood in 2003 and who made sure she swore allegiance to the people of Scotland, not to the monarch.
NOW she is First Minister, though, Miss Sturgeon is having to tread a different path. She is having to be more of a leader and less of a firebrand. What is not clear yet, though, is whether her republican edge has been blunted or just hidden from view.
This past week will certainly have given her much to think about. Not only did she spend last Wednesday on the Royal train, making polite conversation with the Queen, but she and her husband Peter Murrell spent the now traditional night as guests of Her Majesty on her Highland estate earlier in the week.
Spending such a long time in the company of someone she feels she has nothing in common with may have been an uncomfortable experience for the First Minister.
But Miss Sturgeon is skilled enough now to get through that sort of overnight stay pretty effortlessly, however much she disliked it.
We shall never know what went on at Balmoral last week but it is not hard to imagine Miss Sturgeon being courteous and respectful but never really warm or open with the Queen, unlike her predecessor Alex Salmond.
Perhaps the Queen flattered his ego, perhaps he relaxed in the presence of Her Majesty because he knew nothing would ever leak or maybe it was just that they spent their time together discussing horse racing.
Whatever it was, Mr Salmond became quite devoted to Her Majesty during his time as First Minister.
But that is unlikely to happen to Miss Sturgeon. She may have grown adept at coping socially with the Queen but she was a much more hardened republican than Mr Salmond ever was.
Indeed, she has always had a more principled and steely character than her predecessor.
Mr Salmond would flit from policy to policy, from position to position based solely on what would work politically at the time. Indeed, apart from independence, he rarely seemed to have much in the way of ideology holding him together. As a result, he could be a republican in his twenties and turn into a royal enthusiast in his fifties without it causing him any discomfort.
That’s not the case with Miss Sturgeon. She may be able to stand on the steps of Tweedbank Station and sing God Save the Queen as the cameras roll but she is never likely to lose the radical spirit that made her so opposed to the Royal Family only a few years ago.
Miss Sturgeon respects the Queen – certainly more now than she did in the past – but it would be really interesting to know which way she would vote in a secret ballot to drop Her Majesty as Scotland’s head of state, were one to be held.
THAT is something we are going to have to continue to wonder about because the question is unlikely to put to Scots any time soon. While Scotland is certainly more republican than the rest of the United Kingdom, there is no appetite to ditch the monarchy, at least not at the moment, not while the Queen is in charge.
Republicanism has always been a powerful strand within Scottish Nationalism and it will always be there. At the moment though, it is dormant. Its adherents are content to wait and bide their time. They may grimace and shake their heads at the sight of their leader signing the National Anthem alongside the Queen but they will not do anything to rock the boat, not just yet.
But when Prince Charles takes over, they are likely to see it as an opportunity to put the issue of a Scottish republic back on the table again. That will be the time to judge whether Miss Sturgeon’s latent republicanism is also just dormant or whether she has ditched it altogether, as her predecessor did.
That will be the time to take a really close look at whether she really does sing the National Anthem at all those Royal events and, crucially, whether she still clears her diary to spend a couple of days every autumn at Balmoral.
It will be fascinating to watch.