Nic’s plunge and where it all went so right for Ruth
OH well, Nicola. It was nice while it lasted. A new opinion poll suggests a sharp decline in the First Minister’s personal approval ratings. Once more popular in Scotland than a macaroni pie fresh out of the oven, Nicola Sturgeon is now the least popular of Holyrood’s party leaders. Ouch.
How dismal it must be to fall out of fashion, like a puffball skirt or a pair of shoulder pads. There was a time Sturgeon could barely walk out her front door without being garlanded with white roses and informed she was the best thing since, well, macaroni pies.
Her meteoric rise surprised even her, I think, as she was hoisted upon shoulders and held up to the world as an example of how Scotland really could be. She made her predecessor Alex Salmond look old-school. She made David Cameron look out of touch.
But are we really surprised that the wind has changed? All the selfies, ‘call me Nicola’ and ‘look, she’s just like us’ glad-handing in the world cannot distract from a government that is not doing its job, and a leader who is relentlessly, doggedly pursuing her own agenda.
Despite last year’s ‘listening exercise’ on independence, Sturgeon increasingly seems like the woman in the corner with her fingers in her ears, trying to ignore what’s going on until she gets her own way.
It’s not all about her, of course. Her party, too, is suffering from a case of the popularity blues, as last month’s council elections sharply demonstrated. Now they are facing down that ‘difficult second General Election’, and finding that votes aren’t quite so easy to win when you’ve held the keys to power.
And then there’s the partywide flip-flopping. While Sturgeon is busy telling everyone who will listen that victory (whatever that is, given the SNP is bound to lose seats) in next week’s election will give her a ‘triple lock’ mandate for another referendum, her candidate in East Lothian is taking out adverts declaring ‘this election is NOT about independence’. Who are voters supposed to believe?
Add in a depressing drop in literacy rates in schools, an ailing NHS, wayward MPs, a creaking transport system and constant bleating about Brexit and you’ve got a potent cocktail for mass disillusion.
‘Judge me on my record,’ Sturgeon said. Well, we have. And it’s not looking good.
So while Nicola is no longer the most popular girl in the school, that award surely now goes to Ruth Davidson, who has scarcely put a foot wrong since last year’s triumphant Holyrood election that saw her become the leader of the opposition, is now officially more popular than Sturgeon and whose party looks certain to snaffle a few seats off the SNP in the upcoming General Election.
It is a stark and sometimes uncomfortable truth that parties stand or fall on the strength and popularity of their leader. And while in the past Sturgeon has coasted along on a huge wave of mass appeal, this latest poll suggests those days are now over.
Even blind faith, it seems, has the ability to see clearly once in a while.