If Sturgeon’s anticipating her life after politics, she isn’t alone...

IT was quite the performance. Angry, shrill and, at points, bordering on the unhinged. Demonstrating again that she is a graduate of the Alex Salmond School of Petulant Public Speaking, Nicola Sturgeon was on furious, petted lip form as she responded to the Supreme Court’s decision this week that the Scottish Government has no legal authority to hold an independence referendum.

Having declared that she respected the court’s decision she proceeded to bang on at considerable length – I swear I developed several grey hairs by the time she wrapped things up – about ‘democracy’ being ‘denied’ and being a ‘prisoner to Westminster’.

Call me cynical, but it sounded very much to me like she didn’t respect the court’s decision at all.

As others have pointed out, there is something Trump-like in Sturgeon’s decision to rebrand the Yes campaign as ‘Scotland’s democracy movement’.

It is a deeply sinister move designed to alienate the country’s majority (by, guess what, a democratic vote!) that once again shows us her true, nationalist colours.

But what sticks in the craw most is just how energised she was by it all. If only she put this level of passion into oh, I don’t know, fixing the NHS. Or sorting out the ferry scandal. Or the failing education system.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has observed the SNP’s onenote government in action over the past 15 years that even when they’ve been told no by their own people, the Westminster Government and now the Supreme Court, they will not let it lie.

Not even when Scotland’s Chief Constable this week issued a warning that the current ‘constitutional uncertainty’ alongside the cost of living crisis may lead to civil unrest on our streets.

But despite all this, I do think this decision marks a line in the sand, if not for the Nationalist movement in general, then certainly for Sturgeon.

She is now 52, and has been First Minister for eight years, the longest-serving leader in the parliament’s history. She has been a politician for 23 years, almost half her life, and long enough for even the most grounded of individuals to lose their grip on reality.

There was an inevitability about Wednesday’s performance. It is the sort of behaviour desperate people resort to when they are out of options. When they run out of road and know they have failed. It was a distress signal from a sinking ship.

This Supreme Court decision will have come as no surprise to Sturgeon. The First Minister is many things but dim is not one of them. She is sharp as a tack, and she knew it was coming.

I have a sneaky suspicion this ‘democracy movement’ stuff is little more than performative pandering to the nationalists who will not let it go. This is what happens when you sell yourself as a one-issue party. Even when that issue is dead in the water you still have to keep poking it with a stick.

But I also suspect she’s setting it up to be somebody else’s problem. She’s had her shot, and she knows it. And I can’t help but wonder if she’s already got one foot out the door.

OVER the past year Sturgeon has been dropping bread crumbs that she has started considering a life outside of politics. She has expressed an interest in fostering children, and hinted she might write a book. What better time to walk away than before yet another election in which she must bang on about the same old pie-in-thesky, never-going-to-happen issues.

Back in August, during an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sturgeon took to the stage with the actor Brian Cox, a nationalist who, with clunking inevitability, splits his time between London and New York.

‘As I’ve got older, I just, I don’t know, I feel more free. I just don’t give a f*** anymore, you know what I mean?’ he asked the First Minister.

‘I can’t wait to reach that stage,’ Sturgeon responded. I can assure you Nicola, you’re not the only one.