The hypocritical Left got away with fawning over Sturgeon for too long

In recent months, the squalid personal row between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon has spiralled into a stress-test of Scottish democracy. The sulphurous in-fighting has revealed a corrupt, nepotistic and increasingly rotten state of affairs at the top of the Scottish government. The fallout has also exposed a harsh truth about the Scottish National Party itself – something even devout nationalist Alex Salmond implied in his testimony – that it is unfit to lead the current devolved administration, let alone an independent Scotland.

The question is, why has this taken so long to come out?

The length and complexity of the Salmond scandal have in themselves helped the SNP – simply following each twist and turn in this running saga can be tricky even for veteran Holyrood watchers. And Nicola Sturgeon, though rattled, remains a brilliant communicator. The gruelling eight-hour testimony which has apparently secured her political survival, at least for now, showcased her usual fast-talking combination of deflection and self-assured verbal diarrhoea.

There’s another important reason it has taken so long to emerge, too. The British political establishment’s laziness and selective amnesia in its estimate of the SNP. For too long many, especially on the Left, have failed to see the SNP for what they were.

Gushing tributes greeted Sturgeon’s first ministership – in one edition of Holyrood magazine she featured as covergirl, adorned with a halo and the tagline “Angel of the North”. In interviews, she was often treated more like a visiting dignitary than a regular politician by a media overly concerned with rumblings in the House of Commons. TV anchors seldom questioned Sturgeon about her own domestic record.

While the Left-wing commentariat delighted in tearing apart the more Panglossian claims of Brexiteers, rarely did they examine the SNP’s romantic vision of independence, featuring every imaginable benefit and no responsibility whatsoever for funding it. The Nats were instead allowed to fall back on their two-pronged knee-jerk defence; any Westminster failure was an argument for independence; every Holyrood failure the result of too little independence.

Others simply saw in Sturgeon what they wanted to see. With a distinct shortage of strong, progressive Europhile leaders, and the SNP’s charismatic chieftain exuding power and competence, it was easy to ignore its actual policies and rhetoric. But the SNP were never cuddly social democrats, the tartan Lib Dems, as was sometimes claimed. Far from it.

The SNP take great umbrage at being described as “nationalist”. Yet not only do they flaunt their nationalism; they subscribe to an aggressive form of it rarely seen in UK politics – one rooted in a virulent anti-English hostility and the use of “othering” language to sow division. Unionists are routinely cast as traitors, fifth columnists or somehow less Scottish than their nationalist counterparts. Last summer, the First Minister, who kept pushing for independence throughout the pandemic, struggled to conceal her glee at the thought of quarantines for English arrivals into Scotland.

At times, the progressives’ blinkered worldview meant countenancing behaviour they would have strongly condemned elsewhere. Many ignored Sturgeon’s regular Trumpian attacks on journalists and remained largely silent when she began using her daily Covid briefings to push overtly political statements. The SNP’s decision to fly the EU flag outside Scottish government buildings all year round, while only flying the Union flag on Remembrance Sunday, was a transparent attempt to divide that could have been ripped from the Trump playbook. Once again it passed largely unchallenged; this was the right kind of nationalism, after all.

Years of being a big fish in a small pond, however, have left Sturgeon allergic to interrogation. Under scrutiny from high-calibre questioners like Jackie Baillie of Labour and Ruth Davidson of the Conservatives, Sturgeon’s Manuel-like protestations of ignorance – “I know nothing” – are sounding increasingly ridiculous.

It is not yet clear whether she will be forced to resign, though her followers are already behaving like devout Corbynistas in the final days of Jezza; crowing about an alleged influx of new party members and issuing identically worded tweets in support of the Dear Leader. With luck, forthcoming sessions of the inquiry will nullify the SNP’s inexplicable talent for pulling the woollen plaid over the eyes of the rest of Britain.