Sturgeon Out

Hoisted on the petard of her own woke Trans policy, the public outcry tipped the balance leading to this overdue departure.

We can forget how politicians once were. As the desiccated, masculinised and diminished Nicola Sturgeon stands down as Scottish First Minister and head of her Party at an inflexion point for Scots nationalism. The former female, fresh-faced, eloquent, upbeat, super bright and rightful heir to Alex Salmond’s throne, seems an entirely different person. Maybe her trans-formation whilst in power foreshadowed her demise.

She has been a humourless, baritone, bludgeoning presence at press conferences for some time, someone to be feared rather than admired. There was something rather Stalinist about the cult of personality that enveloped her at her peak. And there was something rather menacing about the squads of Nationalists that would surround Unionist speakers at street hustings to aggressively shout down their views during the previously failed Independence referendum.

I have family in Scotland and have visited perhaps once a decade since 1980. I watched the Scots, content with a kind of state-supported cradle-to-the-grave socialism, slowly discard their presbyterian grit, genuine hospitality and good humour - built on Christian cultural muscle memory, and later their working-class, no excuses, masculine edge and swagger that had propelled the national sports teams to over-achievement.

That relentless determination that drove so many of their forebears to military, philosophical, missionary, commercial and academic excellence, and their fellow Scots to make something of themselves in the arts and crafts, film or literature, architecture or industry - often on the Great British, occasionally on the world stage - slowly gave way to a whining decline into an intolerant, irreligious nationalism of woke victimhood and carping ancestral betrayals.

A form of independence that would merely settle for a junior seat at the pointless European Union junket. And a modernised “socialism” - stripped of the Kirk’s severity - that found no ludicrous alien woke proposition it could not embrace; whilst taking pleasure in one-upping whoever was in Ten Downing Street with Press Conferences convened to upstage any agreed joint declaration: “You call that a Covid lockdown? I will give you a lockdown!”

The generous communitarian, moral mutuality and protestant self-sufficiency have long been shelved, along with an education system formerly the Union’s envy. Now there is that condescending sneer that the Jocks leaders espouse, that they are fairer, better, more enlightened than the “Westminster system”, and the “Scottish People” are blah, blah, better than their southern neighbours because…free homecare and prescription charges. A population the tenth of England’s but with an ego in inverse proportion - their best days merged with the British empire they now affect to despise.

It was Sturgeon who oversaw this transition. Now she is off her poise, from humour and rapier intelligent political strategy to hectoring, grating, authoritarianism, no longer the leader that the political class and moderate left of England liked to fawn over whenever she appeared on the BBC’s Radio Four Today Programme or the Sunday political show to bish, bash and bosh whoever was the leader of the English legacy parties, whether in government or out.

She learnt well from the barrister Alex Salmond; they were both canny, politically ruthless and tactical in a way you seldom see in British politics much these days. She wiped the floor with the Labour Leader Ed Miliband in the 2015 debates with a head butt-like political manoeuvre that destroyed the hapless leader’s chance of success in England or Scotland. When Salmond and Sturgeon fell out, it was titanic, and she brooked no opposition as she moved to consolidate her power.

But as soon as the North Sea Oil option had been taken off the table by a decline in supply, lack of investment and Zero Carbon, the Scottish National Socialists Party have been running a political Ponzi Scheme: their goal at the time being, like many small countries in the EU, to use the nationalist card to leverage a better deal from London/Brussels (i.e. countries with larger economies), whilst sheltering behind and benefiting from the same countries military, currency and economic growth.

Surely, no sane Scot really believed in their plans for viable Independent status? They were set to keep the Monarchy, currency, free movement of peoples, and shelter behind NATO whilst flirting with withdrawal (as if) - and banning English nuclear submarines from the Scottish docks. In fact, they would keep everything but our English accents, and the Barnet formula of English subsidies that keep Scotland afloat. What have I missed out? As I say a Ponzi scheme.

During the Brexit debate, Sturgeon had to pretend there was an option of re-joining the EU and seek to prolong the period before a new referendum, in which all she needed was a close result: either a narrow win, which would be historic and lead to another election victory, and years and years of a negotiated exit, and further strutting around; or a narrow loss setting up another potential election victory and another referendum in 5-10 years.

The Scots got to blame the English and vote for an increasingly far-left party manifesto, with answers for every social ill using state intervention and no viable long-term economic strategy - unless you think Zero carbon economicide could actually be made to work - whilst reserving the right to vote against independence in any referendum.

The SNP positioned themselves to the left of any Westminster Conservative government and the Labour Party and blamed budgetary shortfalls on the same. The Conservatives in Scotland moved to the centre-left, the SNP virtually replaced the Labour Party, and who knows, perhaps the Scottish Labour Party will replace the Scottish Conservatives at the next elections. More fatuous musical chairs.

I preferred the old Scotland, the real one that provided some of the best figures in British History and a professional footballer or two for every English team. Scots at ease with being Scottish, in love with their land and history, proud of how they had genuinely punched above their weight and no-chip-on-their-shoulders or any fawning adoration of Angela Merkel. I preferred Archie Gemmill’s defiance at the 1978 Argentinian World Cup.

Sturgeon generally played her cards well, though she looked a fool when she gate-crashed an EU meeting to see John Claude Juncker, one of the European Union Presidents, who was probably too drunk to know who she was. But what has done her in has been the curse of all long-term governments, inadequate policy outcomes coming home to roost, corruption due to no real opposition, and the general decline in public services as the Scottish economy fails to generate the tax receipts to meet the SNP’s promises.

The UK government vetoed the ridiculous Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The far left in the SNP internal party coalition that had pushed it was suddenly confronted with the spectacle of a convicted serial rapist claiming to be a woman so he would be sent to a women’s prison. Sturgeon was hoisted on the petard of her own woke Trans policy when the public outcry forced her to halt it, but this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The accomplishments of the SNP are thin gruel. Independence is an obsession that holds the Scottish Nationalists together, but it looks even further from being secured; the virtual one-party state in Scotland will mean her successor will come from a new generation of leaders within her Party and be faced with the private knowledge that even if a new independence referendum could be secured, the jocks won’t vote for it as they privately know they are better off within the Union.

As Scotland adjusts to the out-of-kilter political landscape ahead, an imploding Conservative party, a recovering Labour party and Scottish National Socialism running out of runway if it is to soar into the upland heavens of Independence, there is only one way for the SNP to go: slow punctuated decline.

I cannot help thinking this voluntary resignation is somehow linked to Jacinda Ardern’s in New Zealand. Far-left promises collapsing into a state-sponsor domination that delivers little and paves the way for Covid lockdowns and Mandatory vaccination. Two ageing women, so changed in appearance that they are almost beyond recognition. Both are complaining they have been running on empty and getting out when the political polls turn against them. At least they had to drag Thatcher out of Number Ten. I wonder what will be left of Sturgeon’s reputation when the excess deaths sweeping Scotland, New Zealand and all the vaccinated world eventually reveal Nicola and Jacinda’s actual legacies.