Nicola, the queen of Scots who is slowly slipping off her throne
NICOLA Sturgeon has gone from one type of Mary to another in short order. From ‘Queen of Scots’ to ‘that bloody woman’. Her speech yesterday to the SNP conference gave us an idea how she has managed to make that journey so quickly.
It was sour and negative about her opponents. Full of overclaims about her own ‘achievements’. And left the most major issues facing Scotland completely un-addressed.
The post-traumatic stress disorder that has gradually grown in the SNP since its 2014 referendum defeat is now blooming into a full- blown political psychosis.
She railed against the ‘dysfunctional’ Cabinet at Westminster – by which, of course, she meant England. She did so while standing on the same platform as her secretaries for health, education, finance and justice.
If this was just irony taken to a new level then the First Minister might just – just – be on the right side of competence. If it was not, she is in need of help from Shona Robison’s dysfunctional NHS but can join the growing waiting list with diminishing hopes of effective treatment.
BUT none of the problems of this nation’s health service was addressed other than to say that doctors and nurses will get a pay rise before the rest of the UK. By trumpeting this victory for Scotland, Miss Sturgeon did not see that her ability to do so contradicted her wailing about ‘Tory austerity’. Or maybe she did but thinks Scots are too thick to notice.
Some might see that omission as criminal, but since Police Scotland’s management barely functions these days she has little to worry about there. Not a word about that crisis, either. Nor was there one word about what she is doing to arrest the decline in our schools other than, yet again, her indignantly spewing she is ‘committed’ to improvement.
The country is used to her words. It has grown bored with them. A positive action would be welcome – but then again, that could overwhelm Miss Robison’s struggling health service with patients suffering from shock.
What ought to be a moment for the nation’s leader to talk to her party and her country – to inspire us all – has clearly become a tick box exercise for this woman to be ‘bloody’ got through. Once, it must have been the occasion of a teenage Nicola Sturgeon’s wildest dreams. To stand at the SNP conference to give the leader’s speech. Pinch yourself. Go on, push it – as head of a Scottish Government.
The reality yesterday is that Nicola going to conference is like a tedious biannual visit to obnoxious elderly relatives who appear unable to hear her but shout all too loudly, demanding she sings old songs. If she mistakes their laughter and applause for approval and support, she is mistaken. They wanted to know when she will try to call the next referendum on independence.
Just as she arrogantly refuses to explain the failings of her Government to the people of Scotland, she refuses to disclose, or apologise for, her political strategy to her party. The issue was glanced at in one brief sentence that they should concentrate not on the ‘when’ but on persuading people of the ‘why’ of Indyref 2 – yet there was precious little on that either.
This is a matter of pretence. Miss Sturgeon knows that she will not win Indyref 2 any time soon. She knows that Theresa May won’t grant one. But if she is to hold on to her job, she has to hint to her baying faithful that the referendum is just around the corner in the hope they don’t notice that she says that every time they meet and never delivers one.
Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues seem genuinely perplexed that the mess of Brexit has not made Scots rally to her cause. That ‘Scotland the Brave’ refuses to rise again as ‘Scotland the Offended’.
Yes, Scotland did vote to remain in the EU; but perfectly logically, a lot of independence supporters voted to leave.
Miss Sturgeon decided to leave that issue alone. Not a word about whether a Scotland that had left the UK would apply to join the EU. Whether or not we would join the euro. Nothing said about what Scotland would do while we were outwith both the EU and the UK.
MISS Sturgeon seems to think the weaknesses of others gives strength to the weaknesses in her arguments. They do not. Yes, Theresa May’s Government is dysfunctional. But sorry, Nicola, so is yours and nations tend not to revolt on the slogan: ‘Yes, we are rubbish; but they are more rubbish than us.’
There was little mention of her White Paper rewrite entitled her Growth Commission. For the First Minister, this is a document she can freely misquote – but while it should apparently provoke a national debate, it was not worthy of one at her party’s conference.
Instead, she had handed it with tartan tongs to her newly installed deputy, Keith Brown, to gently barbecue over the summer.
Big issues not addressed but plenty of petty points made.
Indignant conference speech bingo was completed within the first few minutes, with the phrases, ‘not in our name,’ ‘beggars belief,’ and ‘shame on them,’ deployed as a kind of throat-clearing.
The conference venue, Aberdeen, was praised but it beggared belief that the Labour Party had not expelled its councillors who run the city in coalition with the Tories and who are finding £175 million of cuts that rather embarrassingly are actually done in the name of the First Minister’s Government. Shame on them, perhaps.
The First Minister of course reserves her most vituperative sniggering and head-twitching for the Conservative Party – and gosh, it went down well. She firmly rejected the ‘hostile environment’ to immigrants of the UK administration. In this, she opened herself up most clearly to the charge of being a ‘Tartan Tory’ as Home Secretary Sajid Javid did the exact same thing just a few weeks ago.
The attacks on Ruth Davidson reveal much about the SNP’s mindset. It fears her.
The fact that her ratings are positive despite the drag anchor of Brexit and Theresa May proves she has potency.
The fact that the SNP can still command a lead in the opinion polls despite Miss Sturgeon’s negative ratings suggest she is a drag anchor on the Nationalist cause.
Senior Nationalist MSPs – the ones who knock on doors – don’t believe that the party’s ratings are as high as the polls suggest. They claim that the view on the doorstep is that ordinary voters have had enough of the current First Minister; they are just not sure who else to vote for.
Yesterday was an opportunity for her to try to recalibrate her position. But that would require a level of self-awareness, imagination and political courage she appears not to possess.
She may well live to regret not taking it as, slowly, Nicola, Queen of Scots’ political career comes to a bloody end.
The attacks on Ruth Davidson reveal much about the SNP’s mindset… the party fears her