Thursday 25 November 2021
The phenomena of Nicola Sturgeon
When Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure as First Minister is looked back on, it will be as a phenomenon ( an unexplained happening). Her popularity is certainly on the decline and rightly so, but how she arrived at such a level of popularity will be a mystery.
Her ascension started on the back of the bitter disappointment at the loss of the referendum and I can only surmise that at that point, her loyal following wilfully embedded into their psyche, an adoration state way above any logical or rational level.
From there on people would find it difficult to withdraw from that intoxicated state of mind, regardless of the disaster she was about to become in regard to both fulfilling her propose in life as the leader of the SNP and first minister of Scotland, a country governed on a mandate of gaining independence.
Not only has she presided over a shambles of an administration, reference covid handling and the seeding of retirement homes with infected patients, Fergusons shipbuilding shambles, Alex Salmond conspiracy, etc, etc, etc, and neglect of the cause of independence, but she has also strived to insert policies specifically designed to split any independence vote. Policies such as Named person legislation, Hate crime bill, Gender recognition bill and the introduction of what can only be termed subliminal Child grooming and attempted normalisation of unnatural and dangerous sexual activity, again in children.
Add to this, the attempted destruction of woman’s rights in connection with safe places being shared with men self-identifying as women, and you have a huge question mark over why it has taken so long for her popularity to drop.
One of the reasons of course could be the people she is being compared to, as in Scotland and indeed the UK, as far as politicians go there is not a high bar to reach. We have people like Boris Johnston who rambles on about Peppa Pig during speeches, Kier Starmer who is probably more of a Tory than most of the MP’s on the Tory benches.
I really do not believe history will be kind to Nicola Sturgeon and she deserves nothing less than an honest condemnation of her failures, which mount up by the day. If she is lucky she will get a mention of the baby box, an idea she borrowed from the Scandinavian countries.
Bob Costello 
Did Blair care about his public legacy once it became clear that he wasn’t the messiah? Doesn’t seem so. He literally bailed out of politics in mid term when he’d sufficiently built up his personal public profile and the evidence of his party’s mismanagement was about to become widely self evident. He’d turned Labour into an unelectable toxic mess but personally quickly moved on to concentrate on very successfully making a personal fortune (now estimated at £40 million). I expect Sturgeon will personally try to do likewise, although favouring a high profile public role (UN?) rather than chasing big money, due to her much lower global profile and range of contacts.
But she will , like Blair, will leave ‘her’ Party in a very evident complete mess, the groundwork for which has already been laid as highlighted in the blog. Just as Labour voters in Scotland finally abandoned them in 2015, I expect that SNP voters will abandon the SNP in droves for Alba once the SNP spin meets the real world and Alba increasingly becomes seen as the real party of independence. The SNP spin will like Labour’s, turn into a skid, over which they will then totally lose control of their self created image of competency. It’s already started. Just look at Sturgeon’s poll ratings, and that’s compared with a group of people who, without a doubt, must be the most pathetic group of mainstream politicians that have ever existed at the same time throughout the UK. Sturgeon and the SNP created and held onto their popularity largely based on what the Salmond led SNP had achieved and believed in. It will only be fitting if he should be the one to dethrone her and end the SNP’s period of deceitful popularity.
Ian, I agree 100% she will go once she has set herself up with a new career and put in place a leadership of her choosing so as to ameliorate any backlash for her dubious and conspirator actions throughout her tenure as leader