Susan Dalgety Susan Dalgety

Be warned: Nicola Sturgeon is no progressive

(Photo by ANDREW MILLIGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

While the UK readies itself to emerge, blinking, from lockdown, spare a thought for those of us trapped north of Hadrian’s Wall. Scotland is in the grip of a personality cult that has elevated a mediocre solicitor from a modest background into a cross between Joan of Arc and Hillary Clinton. A Boadicea in beige stilettos and block colours.

Nicola Sturgeon is lauded in the artisan coffee shops of Glasgow’s West End as Scotland’s Jacinda Ardern. Breathless London commentators swoon at her ability to memorise a brief and speak in coherent sentences.

Even her political enemies, inside and outside the SNP, appear mesmerised by the confidence trick she has pulled off. She has taken nationalism – a divisive, reactionary creed – and re-branded it as progressive politics fit for the early days of a better world.

But even the most cursory examination of her record shows a politician who has failed to achieve any social or economic progress in her 14-year reign, first as Scotland’s Deputy First Minister and then as First Minister since 2014.

Scotland’s NHS has coped – just – with Covid-19, but it was on the critical list long before coronavirus. The law that guarantees a patient is treated 12 weeks after diagnosis – introduced by Sturgeon in 2012 when she was health secretary – has been broken 300,000 times.

Breathless London commentators swoon at her ability to memorise a brief and speak in coherent sentences.

The pandemic has exacerbated a national health crisis, with surgeons warning of a two-year wait for crucial knee or hip operations. Sturgeon has effectively jeopardised the founding principle of the NHS – free treatment available at the time of need.

Education has suffered too. One in four children live in poverty,

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Susan Dalgety
Written by
Susan Dalgety
Susan Dalgety is an author, Scotsman columnist and was press secretary to former Scottish First Minister, Lord McConnell.

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