As the defeated parties hold their inevitable election inquests, second only to the bloodletting in Tory circles will be that in the Scottish National Party. Reduced from a party whose proud boast was that it had never lost an election in almost two decades, its angry supporters are claiming that this defeat has all but killed off the cause closest to their hearts: independence for Scotland.
Now a shadow of its former self – down from 48 MPs in the Commons to nine – the party knows only too well where to look for the reason behind this embarrassing downfall. No, not at John Swinney, who had been the party’s third leader in a year and was appointed only seven weeks ago. Veteran nationalists know where the blame lies: the 10 year “reign” of Nicola Sturgeon.
And they’re comparing her time at the top with that of her predecessor and former mentor – now sworn enemy – Alex Salmond. In 2014, he came within ten percentage points of engineering the break up of the United Kingdom, a result that one year later saw the SNP win every seat – bar three – in the 2015 general election.
However, it’s now clear that the Sturgeon legacy is dramatically different.
The 53 year old former lawyer succeeded Salmond almost as soon as the ink was dry on the result of the referendum and her decade at the top started well. During the Covid emergency, she became a household name throughout Britain, thanks to her controversial daily TV news conferences and her tough policies to combat the Covid virus; policies that most now know to have created more problems than they solved.
But her calamitous fall from grace in the political world was hastened by her totally reckless belief in her own omnipotence and her determination to be a world leader, not just in breaking up the United Kingdom but as a pioneer in controversial social change.
Still hanging over Scottish public life is what’s happened to the missing £600,000 from the SNP’s coffers. Donated by members for a referendum that will now never come, Police Scotland’s investigation into where it went recently passed its third anniversary. Sturgeon and a party official were arrested and released without charge pending further inquiries.
Her husband, Peter Murrell, resigned as SNP chief executive, and has now been charged with embezzlement in connection with the missing money, an accusation he denies. Police Scotland say that the First Minister is still under investigation. She denies any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, her pursuit of independence had been stalled by defeat in the 2014 referendum and the opposition of successive Conservative governments to allow another vote. But Sturgeon refused to accept defeat and told everyone that she’d go ahead and stage what was known as Indyref2. However, a unanimous vote of the Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish government couldn’t call such a referendum without the UK Government’s consent.
Despite this, she remained determined to make her mark on the world stage and this occurred with her Gender Recognition Bill which, in spite of widespread concerns even among some of the wisest heads in her own party, would have permitted anyone over 16 to change their gender by a simple statement.
A host of big name critics, including one of the world’s most famous authors, JK Rowling, castigated the bill for being a major threat to women’s rights and safety. And its death knell was sounded when the UK Government, under powers retained by Westminster when the devolved government in Edinburgh was set up, vetoed the measure to stop it becoming law.
There is no doubt that this bill became the issue on which Sturgeon’s judgment and political “nous” was called into question, with her predecessor and former mentor, Alex Salmond, angrily criticising her for damaging the case for independence.
However, while that controversy saw her prestige on the UK stage nose-dive, we can go back almost exactly three years to find the root cause of her downfall.
That was when Sturgeon, who had been angry that she had failed to secure an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament in the 2021 election, sought to “manufacture” an artificial majority that would allow her unfettered power at Holyrood.
On August 20, 2021 a smiling Sturgeon, flanked by even wider smiles from the joint leaders of the Scottish Greens – Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater – formally signed the so-called Bute House Agreement.
Its objective was simple: to create “a majority in the Scottish Parliament for a transformative agenda and a cast-iron mandate for giving the people of Scotland the choice of independence” with a massive 71-57 majority at Holyrood.
While the Greens had only seven MSPs to the SNP’s 64, it was the former that swiftly took charge of the coalition’s agenda with the result that soon it wasn’t the tail wagging the dog, more that there was only tail and no dog.
The Greens have long supported independence but, while securing their backing for another referendum, Sturgeon appeared to concede almost absolute power over her government’s domestic agenda to this tiny Marxist-leaning party that hardly anyone votes for.
This saw the Greens giving her strong encouragement on the gender issue, calling the shots on shutting down North Sea oil and gas production, bringing in Highly Protected Marine Areas in Scottish waters which would have banned fishing in remote West Highland communities, and being responsible for a slowdown to the upgrade of vital trunk roads.
It’s difficult to blame the Greens for the farce over the building of those two ferries on a Clyde yard nationalised by Sturgeon. Now at least five years late, their cost has soared from £97 million to over £240 million. Sturgeon managed that all on her own.
Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s ultimately ill-fated successor as first minister, did summon up the courage to get rid of the Greens, over a dispute on climate change targets, only for the Greens to get rid of him. After being sacked, they tabled a no confidence motion in him, which was backed by opposition parties, and Humza was gone, forced to resign.
And that’s where John Swinney came in to try and unpick the worst aspects of the Sturgeon legacy. He failed.
She may have enjoyed being feted at home and abroad, especially by the London commentariat, but in the end Sturgeon’s legacy has been to transform the SNP from a sure-fire election winner to a warring hotch-potch of mediocrities which has now seen its proud third place on the Commons benches reduced to a mere handful.
Oh yes, and incredibly to my mind, she was a guest pundit on ITV’s election special, and candidly – even brazenly – admitted on air that the SNP was having a “grim” night of bad results.
But did she apologise on air for her part in her party’s catastrophic downfall? Not that I heard.
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