Nobody ever accused former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon of possessing a great sense of humour but, surely, she must be joking. Writing in the Guardian about proposed justice reforms in Scotland, Sturgeon has blamed deep political divisions for some taking fixed positions before examining the evidence.
This is like an arsonist explaining that while, yes, they may have petrol-bombed that Pizza Hut, they hadn’t expected the place to burn down
And then the killer punchline. On the issue of polarisation, Sturgeon says she had ‘underestimated the depth of the problem’.
This is like an arsonist explaining that while, yes, they may have petrol-bombed that Pizza Hut, they hadn’t expected the place to burn down.
Nicola Sturgeon has, without question, been the driving force behind the polarisation of Scots in recent years. She has othered opponents and treated the views of the majority with energetic disdain. Her actions have been entirely deliberate.
When Scots rejected the nationalists’ separation plans in 2014, the pugnacious Alex Salmond quit as SNP leader and Sturgeon stepped up, promising to be a leader for all Scots, regardless of how they had voted in the independence referendum. This solemn pledge was to last for days.
Soon, Sturgeon was gaslighting No voters, insisting they were changing their minds about independence even as polls told a very different story.
Opposition politicians were, routinely, treated with contempt. Any legitimate criticism of Scottish government policy was dismissed by Sturgeon as an example of ‘talking Scotland down.’ Any slight was defended with a boorish – and complacent – reminder of the most recent election results.
And Sturgeon was perfectly happy to make things unpleasantly personal. When former Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson lost her seat at Westminster, the then First Minister could be seen on live TV, clenching her fists and cheering like she was watching a fight in a pub car park. And then there was her take on the Tories, the second party at Holyrood and, therefore, the preference of hundreds of thousands of Scots. ‘I detest the Tories’, she said, leaving those voters in no doubt about how seriously she took their concerns.
Now, on the issue of whether there should be a pilot of jury-free trials in rape cases – a proposal rejected by lawyers across Scotland – Sturgeon writes ‘we should accept there are valid points on both sides and allow some good faith to enter the debate.’ It’s enough to make the eyes roll completely out of your head.
When, last year, Sturgeon was driving the Scottish government’s flawed plan to reform the Gender Recognition Act, she simply refused to accept that the views of anyone who disagreed were worthy of consideration. Rather, she painted women who feared the introduction of self-ID would negatively impact on same-sex spaces as cruel transphobes. Their concerns were simply not valid.
Sturgeon trashed the idea that those who disagreed with her position were acting in good faith. In fact, she said, some people were using the issue of women’s rights as ‘a sort of cloak of acceptability to cover up what is transphobia’, adding ‘But just as they’re transphobic you’ll also find they are deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist as well.’ As bad faith arguments go, that’s a doozy.
If political debate is broken in Scotland – and, I fear, it is – Nicola Sturgeon cannot complain. Her boot-prints are all over the scene of the crime.
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