Back to Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon is once again stealing the spotlight. This time the former first minister decided the Charleston literary festival held in Sussex this weekend would be the perfect place from which to ruffle feathers in her own party. The SNP’s Dear Leader bemoaned the number of young people entering politics ‘for all the wrong reasons’, telling her audience that: ‘I think politics, including in my own party now, is probably too full of young people who have just come through the political ranks’. Ouch.
It’s a kick in the teeth to senior SNP figures like net zero secretary Màiri McAllan who spent time as, er, Sturgeon’s SpAd before she became an MSP at 28. Or Mhairi Black, the SNP MP who was elected to parliament at just 20 years old while she was still studying at Glasgow University. Or the party’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, who, after working as a political researcher for SNP politicians became an Aberdeen councillor in his twenties before going on to become an MP when he was just 30. And though Sturgeon might have earned the title of ‘veteran’ politician now, she would do well to remember that she was only 21 years old herself when she contested the Glasgow Shettleston seat in the 1992 election — before becoming an MSP at 28. Talk about double standards…
And Mr S isn’t alone in thinking that there’s more than a whiff of hypocrisy emanating from Sturgeon’s statements. The ex-leader’s old colleague Angus MacNeil (now an Independent MP after being expelled from the SNP) took to Twitter this afternoon to berate his former boss — querying whether it was ‘National No-Self Awareness Day’. That’s, um, every day in the SNP, Steerpike is afraid…
Sturgeon’s rather bizarre intervention comes as her successor and ‘unity’ candidate John Swinney fights to hold the party together after a rather tumultuous 18 months. The new leader is facing trouble on several fronts, and polling has today suggested that Scottish Labour now has a 10-point lead on the SNP in the next Westminster election. Pollster supremo John Curtice predicts this would translate to a mere 11 seats for the Nats, with Labour taking 35 overall. Crikey.
The party’s underwhelming performance in the polls is a sore point for the nationalists, and Sturgeon’s ill-timed comments will hardly help calm tensions. How long will it be before they’re all back fighting like Nats in a sack? Watch this space…
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