I don’t know about voter’s remorse but there was precious little remorse from Nicola Sturgeon on Loose Women on Monday for the chaos she inflicted on her party by resigning in pique without giving it a chance to organise an orderly transition. She showed all the insouciance of a teenager who had just wrecked the family car. Nothing to do with me – it’s really your fault for giving me the keys.
It was fitting that Nicola Sturgeon should have decided to deliver her valedictory, not to a committee of her peers in parliament – she reportedly sidestepped an invitation from the Scottish Affairs Select Committee – but to a gaggle of D-list daytime celebs on Loose Women.
There was no excuse for Nicola Sturgeon’s reckless behaviour last month
At any rate, Sturgeon doesn’t seem to be much concerned with her legacy. Most commentators, myself included, had considerable respect for Nicola Sturgeon as a politician. Even those who objected to her politics admitted that she was good at her job: hard working, dedicated, intelligent, responsible. Not anymore.
What did she have against the SNP to treat them this way? What did they do to her – other than shower her with praise and try to make sense of her increasingly erratic and headstrong behaviour? Who does she think she is?
She had the nerve to describe the chaos in her party as the result of ‘growing pains’. It was more like a drive by shooting. There was no excuse for Nicola Sturgeon’s reckless behaviour last month. No political party, nor any large organisation, could have coped with the abrupt departure of such a pivotal figure without warning.
Transition planning does not just mean trying to bounce your favourite mediocrity into the top slot to make you look good. It means giving the party time and space to reflect and to organise a leadership contest that attracts all the talents in the party and gives them time to fashion a new agenda for the future. It does not mean saying, in effect, ‘I’m outta here, bye suckers.’
And remember this is not just the leadership of the Scottish National Party but the First Minister. It was the people of Scotland whom she gave the bum’s rush.
Normally, there is no justification in our constitution for a general election when a national leader is replaced. We elect the party not the individual. But this time I am not so sure. Sturgeon’s behaviour has so destabilised the party of government, and the country, there is now a case for a Scottish parliament election.
The SNP leadership contest has been a farce. It was transparently manipulated to deliver success to the ‘continuity candidate’. Humza Yousaf’s rivals were given barely a week to get their respective acts together. Many more experienced figures in the party saw what was going down and stood well back. The hustings campaign was shambolic and amateurish. If candidates were unrehearsed and confused about their own policies that was not entirely their fault. They had a ludicrously restrictive cap of £5,000 on their campaign budget. This gave them no hope of putting together a professional team of advisers and a computer media campaign.
Then the integrity of the entire election process was cast into doubt by statements about the size of the party membership. That is essential intelligence for candidates in any election. Finally, just about everyone in SNP HQ from Sturgeon’s husband the Chief Executive Peter Murrell down, resigned at the weekend in disgrace.
Yet thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of SNP members voted last week with no inkling that this implosion was about to happen. It stands to reason that their view of the ‘continuity candidate’s’ worth would have been significantly altered had they fully known just what he was continuing.
No one can have any confidence in this election. This means that no one in Scotland can have confidence in the person elected. If it is Mr Continuity, Humza Yousaf, many in and out of the SNP will suspect he has been the beneficiary, if not of foul play, then a totally discredited process that does not reliably reflect the views of party members.
Ms Sturgeon seems to believe this is nothing to do with her. Yet it was all about her. Her decision to go was inspired, she said, not by the need for political change, but because she saw Jacinda Ardern do it. It was a #MeToo thing. Nor does she think her disastrous Gender Recognition Reform Bill has been a factor in her party’s loss of trust and support.
To cap it all she tried to tell Loose Women that she didn’t know the SNP party membership was in freefall. Really? This is the leader who obsessively tweeted and celebrated every uptick in the party membership in the years after 2014. But no, she never looks at the numbers now – why would she? Even as the loss of 30,000 subscriptions in a year was causing a meltdown with the party finances.
Nicola Sturgeon’s departure was always going to be a shock, but it needn’t have been a crisis. If she had given a clear and reasonable timetable for her departure then this unpleasantness need never have happened.
History may have little time for this self-centred and arrogant politician. It takes years to build up a reputation like Nicola Sturgeon’s but only a day or two to destroy it.
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