Sturgeon’s contempt

FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon was meant to be a different kind of leader from Alex Salmond. SNP spinners devoted huge effort to persuading voters that, when Ms Sturgeon took over the top job in Scottish Government in 2014, we were entering a new, more thoughtful, more consensual era in politics.

With the divisive Mr Salmond off to Westminster, Ms Sturgeon would bring a fractured Scotland back together again. She had heard the people speak and she would lead for all.

This was, it soon became depressingly apparent, absolute hogwash. Ms Sturgeon’s independence monomania every bit as powerful as Mr Salmond’s; her stubborn refusal to listen to the wishes of the pro-UK majority in Scotland has meant years of reckless game-playing over the timing of her longedfor second independence referendum.

When the SNP’s Growth Commission recently published its report on the prospects of an independent Scotland, the party’s spinners kicked back into action. The cautious tone of the report and the First Minister’s warm words about it should be taken to mean she has taken her foot off the constitutional accelerator.

Yesterday, Ms Sturgeon told her enthusiastic admirers at the SNP’s conference that the case for independence had been renewed and that the party’s task now was to build that pro-separation majority.

When she was not cheerleading for a second independence referendum that Scotland does not want, the First Minister spent a great deal of her speech attacking the Conservatives and Ruth Davidson.

It is testament to Miss Davidson’s talents as a politician that she is now seen by Nicola Sturgeon as the greatest threat to the Nationalists’ continued dominance of Scottish politics. The grim irony for the First Minister is the more she threatens another referendum, the stronger she makes Ruth Davidson.

And her announcement of a pay rise for health workers was pure political theatre and does nothing to alleviate the systemic problems facing the NHS in Scotland.

Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon could have delivered a speech which sought to unite Scotland, that tried to build consensus at Holyrood over the use of the powers of devolution; instead, she showed predictable contempt for the views of the majority.