Sturgeon’s Scotland isn’t fit for independence

The First Minister’s attempt to play the statesman is not just ridiculous, it is dangerous

One senses that Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, misses the limelight she grabbed when Covid-19 was at its zenith. She seems instead to seek other means to keep her name before the public. It might be better for all, however, if she did so in a way that did not risk provoking the Third World War.

Last week she showed her absence of statesmanship by demanding Nato “keep its mind open” on a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The clear effect of such a zone, as even 14-year-old armchair generals realise, would be that if a Russian jet flew into that airspace, a Nato one would have to shoot it down. No right-thinking person feels anything but utter revulsion at what the Russians are doing to Ukraine. But a no-fly zone could become a war between a nuclear-armed Nato and a nuclear-armed Russia: and no one can be sure that the psychopath who runs Russia would not launch such a weapon – unless, of course, he has taken Ms Sturgeon into his confidence.

Normally, when Scotland’s First Minister says something absurd, her political opponents hesitate to take her on. Happily, this was not the Conservative Party’s response this time, as it realised the lethal consequences of her idiocy. Ministers are at last prepared to expose just how far out of her depth she is. Alister Jack, the Secretary of State for Scotland, was right to call her remarks “utterly irresponsible”. The Ministry of Defence has briefed the Scottish government regularly on the situation, yet what Ms Sturgeon suggested was at odds with what Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, had advised the Cabinet.

There is a further paradox: although Ms Sturgeon seems willing to provoke the Third World War, she also wants to scrap the Trident missiles that would give the United Kingdom and her Nato allies a reasonable chance of avoiding the apocalypse. But because the Government at Westminster opposes a no-fly zone, for eminently sensible reasons, she seems to feel she has to call for one, just as during the pandemic she had to implement restrictions that began earlier, finished later, and were just that little bit more draconian. Like a spoilt child in a playground, she always has to be different, because in her ignorance she believes different is the same as better, and she has always to be better than the English oppressor.

Similarly, as those she claims to represent struggle with increased energy bills, she opposes more drilling in the North Sea: frankly, if she really cared for their interests, she would sanction it tomorrow, and reopen some of Scotland’s coal mines, too. Instead, her other concern last week was to apologise to the 4,000 or so people (about 15 per cent of whom were men) charged with witchcraft under the Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563, which she branded “injustice on a colossal scale”. She now advocates pardons for them, as she introduces an Orwellian law to make misogyny a criminal offence. Her only regret must be that the Act pre-dates the Act of Union, and all the great witch-hunts also happened before 1707: otherwise, one presumes, the English taxpayer would be ordered to pay reparations.

This desperate attention-seeking is another sign that peak Sturgeon has long passed: and it is harmless in that it diminishes only her and the fundamentally unserious cause of Scottish independence that she represents. And that cause will remain unserious so long as Ms Sturgeon and her acolytes act in such a petulant and irresponsible fashion.

However, trying to pretend she understands international statesmanship is a more perilous activity, and one that shows her deeply unfit to lead. A period of silence, as Mr Attlee once put it, would be not only welcome, but perhaps life-saving.

This desperate attentionseeking is another sign that peak Sturgeon has long passed: and it is harmless in that it diminishes only her