You’re looking like the inadequates’ inadequate, Nicola

FOR me, the nadir of political interviewing came when the BBC’s Andrew Marr, armed with nothing more than malicious Westminster village gossip, asked the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown whether or not he took antidepressants. It was unnecessary, unfair, distorting and untrue.

But it is a sign of where we have got to in UK politics that if the current Prime Minister were offered some medication by an interviewer, it would look like an act of kindness.

Theresa May’s fall has been dramatic and the only thing keeping her in office is the fact that the Tories can’t agree on a successor.

Eight weeks ago she was on course for a landslide election victory that promised to make her Prime Minister in perpetuity. Now she survives – barely – hour by hour.

Her initial response to the tragedy of Grenfell Tower was pathetic – graphically exposed when we found that our 91-year-old Monarch walked where our political leader feared to tread.

For the Tories, Grenfell Tower – as with the murder of Jamie Bulger almost a quarter of a century ago – threatens to become an icon of our times, describing our society in a way that goes well beyond the actual causes of the tragedy.

THE UK appears to be in disarray. This should be a heavensent chance for Scotland’s Nationalists. Yet instead of laying bare the weaknesses of the state they wish us to leave, the current crisis is masking the inadequacies of the separatists who claim to have a solution to our woes.

At First Minister’s Questions last Thursday, Nicola Sturgeon, in a characteristic burst of rehearsed indignation, set out the charges against the UK Government.

Refusing to ‘take any lectures’ she said: ‘Let us just recap what the Tories have managed to do to the UK in the space of just one year.

‘First, they called a divisive and unnecessary European Union referendum, entirely for reasons of Conservative Party management.

‘Having lost that gamble, they are now pursuing a hard Brexit, purely to appease the Right wing of the Conservative Party. As if that was not enough, they then called an unnecessary general election, purely in the self-interest of the Conservative Party.

‘Having mucked up that campaign, they are now putting the country in hock to the Democratic Unionist Party.

‘That is what the Tories have done in less than a year.’

All of that, I think, is a fair analysis. But given those circumstances, what has Miss Sturgeon achieved?

In ‘less than a year’, under her leadership, support for the SNP has fallen dramatically – as 21 now redundant Nationalist MPs will testify. Support for a second referendum has plummeted. Backing for independence has shrunk. This woman maybe needs a lecture.

If Mrs May is inadequate, Miss Sturgeon looks like the inadequates’ inadequate.

Scotland’s First Minister seems as incapable of rising to the occasion as the UK’s Prime Minister. She tries to manage a party but has little interest in the dirty business of leading her country.

Imagine where she could have been if she cared for her country more than her party; if she had stuck to the promise she made to Scotland in the 2014 referendum that it was a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity and hadn’t threatened the majority of us with another.

Then, the day after the Brexit vote, she could have spoken for all of Scotland. She could have pointed out that opposition leaders Ruth Davidson, Kezia Dugdale and Willie Rennie had all – like her – campaigned for Remain.

She could have asked them to join with her in negotiating on Scotland’s behalf with the UK Government to stay in the EU. They would have had to agree. Scotland, at least in terms of political leadership, would have been united – and possibly the cause for a second referendum on independence advanced if talks had not gone well.

BUT Miss Sturgeon’s instinct is not for her country but for her party. There was shortterm political capital to be made. Fanatics to be appeased.

Perhaps appropriate for a separatist, her strategy is to divide not unite. To create two classes of Scot – those who agree with her on independence and an apparent sub-species who believe in the Union and who should be silenced.

There is no ‘big picture’ for our First Minister, only a narrow obsession. So she cannot see opportunities when they present themselves.

The day after the Brexit vote, Scottish Labour leader Miss Dugdale – as we now know thanks to the First Minister’s belief that no conversation is private – thought of changing her position on Indyref 2. Senior Scottish Tories will privately concede they feared the game was up.

Had Nicola Sturgeon thought things through rather than rushed to respond the day after Brexit, she could be in a better position today than she is.

Instead, at the start of a week when a dysfunctional UK Government starts Brexit talks, Miss Sturgeon is going backwards not forwards.

She will surely outlast Mrs May but if she is not on borrowed time, she is at least looking for a lender.