Stars align for Nicola Sturgeon as the Union fragments
I DON’T know which gods Nicola Sturgeon prays to, but they came out for her on Friday. The SNP increased its share of votes and seats in the local elections, but that seemed almost routine – it’s what they do.
Yet this was their eleventh election victory in their fifteenth year in power in Holyrood.
And it’s been a damaging one with rows over ferry contracts, school performance, gender reform, poverty stats. These petty issues just bounce off the Sturgeon force field.
But the Scottish results were only part of Nicola Sturgeon’s triumph last week. The stars are aligning across the UK for the nationalists in quite extraordinary ways. It is almost uncanny.
The SNP always distanced itself from Sinn Fein, since it used to be the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. It didn’t want to be tainted by association with the men of violence.
But all that’s suddenly changed. Sinn Fein has joined the ranks of “progressive” nationalism with a female leader, Michelle O’Neill, who is now the First Minister-elect of Northern Ireland. Nicola Sturgeon can do business with her as they work to break up the UK.
Ms O’Neill is unable to assume her role as Stormont is currently suspended, and the reunification of Ireland is still some way off. But anything that weakens the ties that bind the components of the Union is good news for the SNP.
‘Diminished’
NORTHERN Ireland is hanging by a thread, dangling on the end of the botched Northern Ireland protocol. The EU has achieved its objective of keeping Ireland as a regulatory colony, and the UK has been diminished as a result.
But an even bigger plus for Nicola Sturgeon was the result in
England. The Tories were humiliated, losing 350 council seats, but they were not humiliated enough to force Boris Johnson’s demise.
The longer he remains the better, as far as the SNP is concerned.
Deft spinning by Tory party managers on election night made it look as if, while Labour had won in London, capturing Tory bastions like Wandsworth and Westminster, elsewhere the Tories were standing firm in the red wall. This did not really withstand the light of day on Friday.
It was a disastrous night any way you looked at it. But it didn’t really matter. Boris Johnson looks safe for now.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir
Starmer and his deputy
Angela Raynor are under pressure to resign over
“beergate”, the latenight Durham drinking session they attended last year during Tier 2 lockdown.
It is a remarkable turn of events. Sir
Keir called on Boris
Johnson to resign on the very day the Metropolitan police announced an investigation into parties in Number 10. Now Durham Police say new information has prompted them to investigate Sir Keir, but he shows no sign of doing likewise.
Tory MPs who wanted Boris out over partygate have missed their moment. There is now little prospect of a change in Number 10 before 2024. This is the perfect scenario for Nicola Sturgeon.
Boris Johnson is loathed in Scotland and is the best recruiting sergeant for independence since Margaret Thatcher. Fate seems to be propelling Scotland towards independence. The Scottish National Party dominates at every level of government in Scotland.
The Union is disintegrating, north and south, east and west. Labour is becoming the party of the metropolitan London elite, its leader suddenly in the partygate dock. The Scottish Tories are effectively leaderless. The UK Tories have a toxic leader until 2024.
The Scottish local election results could hardly have played better for Ms Sturgeon. So she could afford to be magnanimous, congratulating the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar for replacing the Tories in nominal second place, at the foot of the results table. Talk about faint praise.
Mr Sarwar has anyway said that he will not join any coalitions, even though Labour is involved in cross-party alliances in numerous councils including Edinburgh.
Ross a dead loss
THE Tories now have two leadership crises: in Westminster and Holyrood. Douglas Ross is clearly not working. His flip-flop on partygate, calling on Boris Johnson to resign and then not resign over it, left him looking as if he didn’t know his own mind.
But the Tories would probably have crashed either way.
The Union is disintegrating, north and south, east and west. Labour is becoming the party of the metropolitan London elite, its leader suddenly in the partygate dock. The Scottish Tories are effectively leaderless. The UK Tories have a toxic leader until 2024
The SNP PR machine, projected across social media, continues to portray the Conservatives as the personification of evil: Eton toffs who put profits before people and think climate change is a hoax. There is no obvious alternative to Ross unless they can beg or bribe Baroness Ruth Davidson to return to electoral politics.
The SNP kept Glasgow, against the odds, even though they’ve devolved some of the council seats to their clone party, the Scottish Greens. So dire is the state of political opposition in Scotland that the SNP have had to create their own pet opposition in the shape of Patrick Harvie’s crew.
Though Mhairi Hunter, Nicola Sturgeon’s close ally, who lost her council seat to Green votes, may not be so sanguine having them in the tent. I mean, on this showing, why does the SNP need them?
Alex Salmond’s breakaway nationalist party, Alba, all but expired on Friday with none of its 111 candidates winning a seat, and all its existing councillors losing theirs, including Alba’s general secretary, Chris McEleny.
Salmond failure
MR Salmond may have led the first SNP government and delivered the 2014 referendum, but he’s been written out of history.
The only piece of the jigsaw left is the referendum itself.
Boris Johnson is still not going to agree to it, and Nicola Sturgeon said last week she will only entertain a “legal” referendum, one that is authorised by the Westminster Parliament. Many SNP members want her to stage an unofficial “advisory” referendum, but she is not going to do that.
After this victory, Nicola Sturgeon can face down any internal opposition. She will turn the 2024 General Election into a referendum on independence.
It could be the last nail in the Union coffin.