Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has led a charmed life. Even her sternest critics agree that she is immensely talented, one of the UK’s most successful politicians, a master of detail and an effective communicator. She has been at the pinnacle of public life for two decades. But all things must pass. Nearly ten years after she took over as leader from Alex Salmond just about everything is going wrong at once.
Hospital waiting lists lengthen, teacher strikes roll on, council service cuts deepen, the ambitious plan for a Social Care Commission has stalled. Across the board the SNP government appears to have made a right royal mess of just about every policy for which it has responsibility. The First Minister has managed to remain above the chaos, as if it is all someone else’s fault – usually the Westminster Tories.
She cannot, however, blame Westminster for the highest homeless numbers on record. The educational attainment gap, on which she said she wanted her leadership to be judged, is actually growing. The ferry contracts fiasco is a direct result of her botched nationalisation of Ferguson Marine. She turned her back on North Sea oil and gas just at the moment energy prices sky-rocketed leaving many Scottish families unable to heat their homes. Yet even her own much-vaunted climate change targets are being missed, only a year after the First Minister promenaded at COP26.
Even the independence project is going south. The First Minister’s attempts to bounce the UK into an early referendum was given humiliatingly short shrift by the Supreme Court, last year. Her plan to turn the next general election into a ‘defacto’ referendum on independence has been denounced by constitutional experts and caused a split in the Yes movement.
Yet the First Minister’s personal popularity has remained high. Nicola has been walking on water, across a sea of trouble. Until now.
The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, currently stalled at Westminster under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, looks like the tide has finally turned. The revelation that trans sex offenders have been housed in Scottish women’s prisons has been a devastating blow to the First Minister’s flagship policy of allowing trans people to self-declare their gender. Scottish voters were already opposed to a law that allows 16 year olds to change sex on a whim. The ‘trans rapist’ affair has dominated press front pages all week and sensationally exposed the risk of her policy being exploited by predatory men.
Sturgeon is immensely proud of her feminist image as Scotland’s Jacinda Ardern – kind, caring, progressive – and is accustomed to getting an easy ride from the press. The UK media likes to flatter her as the acceptable face of politics – in contrast to the sleazy, misogynistic Tories. Now Saint Nicola has found herself on the wrong side of history, accused of exposing women prisoners to the risk of male violence. TV journalists are asking her tough questions for once.
Yet the First Minister’s personal popularity has remained high. Nicola has been walking on water, across a sea of trouble. Until now.
Ministers are now claiming that they didn’t know about male sex offenders being placed in womens’s jails which, if true, betrays staggering irresponsibility since this is the SNP’s flagship legislation. Worse it has vindicated Rishi Sunak’s decision to block the GRR Bill earlier this month, on the grounds that it would have an ‘adverse effect’ on UK law and women’s rights.
Sturgeon has promised to take the fight to the Supreme Court, but she must realise that she would almost certainly lose. She has effectively torpedoed her own legislation by ordering the Scottish Prison Service to place trans women in a male jail. It seems highly likely now that this bill in its present form will have to be scrapped.
Many believe the bill was part of the First Minister’s plan to secure a big international human rights job after she stands down. Sturgeon has been saying for the past two years that she wants another job after politics: to be a foster carer, write a book, perhaps be an LGBTQIA+ advocate.
But time is not on her side. Nearly a decade since she became leader, her grip on events has been visibly failing, not least over independence. There is immense frustration in the party at her failure to move the dial on independence for Scotland despite winning huge majorities in successive elections.
Ploys like challenging Westminster in the courts seem pointless to nationalists who think the final arbiter in constitutional disputes, the UK Supreme Court, should have no jurisdiction in Scotland. There are still no coherent answers to the problems of a hard border with England and the need for a separate Scottish currency, even though these issues are infinitely more problematic because of Brexit. The idea of turning the next general election into a defacto referendum makes little sense constitutionally and poses the risk that, if the SNP doesn’t win more than half of the votes – an almost impossible task – it will kill independence for a generation.
A new departure is needed. However Sturgeon, and her husband, the SNP Chief Executive, Peter Murrell, have used their control over this increasingly monolithic party to prevent any rival emerging from party ranks. The most likely inheritor is the former Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, the MSP for Edinburgh Central and the party’s constitution spokesman. But Robertson is on the right of the party and ardently pro-Nato, and the left think he is likely to cave in on nuclear weapons on the Clyde.
Nicola Sturgeon is a highly effective political operator, always well briefed, rarely lost for words and with the gift of credibility. During the pandemic she conveyed the impression that she was calmly in control of events, unlike reckless, blustering Boris Johnson. Nationalists loved every minute. A year on Holyrood is alive with rumours that she is about to quit, had enough, done her time. The SNP is like a pressure cooker ready to erupt. It may be a good time for Nicola to get out of the kitchen
This piece originally appeared on Iain Macwhirter’s Substack.
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