Why Did She Go?

There's no need to wait for history - her legacy is irrationality, betrayal, illness and death, whatever side of the fence you're on.

Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation in a surprise press conference on the 15th February. The strains of the job had taken their toll at a personal level, she said; at a political one, the calculations and her narrowing prospects suggested that she had gotten herself boxed into a corner from which she, as a political figure, could not escape. How could she argue convincingly to her party and Scottish independence supporters that the next general election would be a referendum on sovereignty when this would be the third or fourth election that she’d be trying to sell that specific line. It just was no longer credible. As this was her public position, with, despite years for preparation, no other options available, it was clear that the party’s divisions on a tired, overplayed strategy would mean the end of her as an authoritative leader anyway. The SNP might still be in power; she may even still be First Minister, but the party would now view themselves as decaying, decadent and rudderless. Ironic. As, unless you are either a transactivist or somebody who actively believes in the destruction of national culture, there has not been a rudder attached to this particular ship for years.

Hailed as a great politician, her actual positive record is so thin it could slip between two coats of paint. Baby boxes can be chalked into the ‘achievement’ column; there have been a few redresses of Conservative cuts where benefits are concerned; money has been poured into the poverty black hole of Scotland, which has been spent with little to no thought about concrete, sustainable advancement and no genuine measure of improvement and…that’s about it. Even these are easily criticised. Why spend millions on baby boxes for every new mother when the government could target poorer families and give them more, or increase child benefit? The benefit cut roll-backs: fair enough. Poverty? Here is the actual policy: give money to Third Party charities, the first tens of thousands of funding go to the charity employees, who are nearly exclusively middle-class, who are then very well-remunerated to ‘help’ the poor - although with no discernible impact as yet, metrics portraying destitution, distress and drug addiction are increasing - and while your government does this, sell off land to foreign companies and off-shore trust funds; sell off the sea-bed to multi-nationals; allow a Chinese company to buy the land under a Firth and a Spanish company to make underwater electric turbines, and instead of developing hundreds of jobs in Scotland, generating cheap electricity and creating a boom in the Highlands, let the local people see their cash siphoned off abroad and allow them to stand-by impotently as they lose the right to another of the nation’s assets. Repeat all over the country and the reality is that the surplus wealth of Scotland is providing cash transfusions to corporations all over the world. The poor pay, but so do we all.

Has so much of Scotland been sold off, on the cheap, under any other leader? What other injuries has the First Minister’s administration inflicted on a wounded Scotland or failed to tend? Land reform, didn’t happen. Investment bank, didn’t happen. Central bank preparation, didn’t happen. Border railway extension, didn’t happen. Far-sighted infrastructure investment, didn’t happen. NHS improvement, didn’t happen - went backward. Education improvement, didn’t happen (attainment got so bad we withdrew from international surveys). Closing the gap, didn’t happen - got worse. Sovereign Wealth Fund, didn’t happen. Preparation for a Scottish currency - a pre-requisite for an independent economic policy and, if you’re EU minded as the majority of the SNP are, for joining the European Union - didn’t happen. This list is only partial and could be extended further. Still, the failings are apparent. As a leader of a government, and a government that was agitating for a major restructuring in its relations with its own institutions and with the rest of the world, the steps taken towards that goal have been ineffective and irrelevant - throwaway, although much heralded, ‘white papers’ - nonetheless, the sabotage of the stated intent by obstruction, diversion and omission are consistent and long-lasting.

What Nicola Sturgeon appeared to be good at was claiming credit for other people’s achievements: the Queensferry Crossing was started by her predecessor, opened on her term in office - she was quick to claim credit. Schools and public buildings opened under her tenure had long been pre-planned. A report on some social issue, that which fitted with the agenda, was embraced with a minor bureaucratic adjustment - successes that were much advertised but were hardly even worthy of the name - hard, demanding enterprises like Bifab, Prestwick airport and ferries were utter failures. So few achievements for eight years in power.

Maybe she had other priorities. For those that follow Nicola Sturgeon’s Twitter account, you will know that the soon-to-be-former First Minister loved reading and was always happy to tweet the latest novel on her bedside table. However, did she ever read a Scottish book? Hardly ever. A Scottish history book. Never. Her reading choice, nearly-uniformly WOKE, was straight from being gushed over at The Guardian culture section; it would not be surprise to discover she received, second hand, the copies sent by the publishers to that corroded, bastion of hypocrisy. Strangely, a woman who had devoted her life to the cause of Scottish independence, something she always reminds us of, seemed seriously uninterested in Scottish history, culture and…independence.

In 2014 and 2015, stadiums could be filled with cheering independence supporters. Now, it’s a different story: the last conference, held in a much, much smaller venue, was half-full. The enthusiasm has not gone: it’s in a coma, on life support. If the Wokery and cultural destruction continue (globally not just in the UK), then the electricity will be cut and the patient will die. But, initially, first of all, it was Sturgeon that put the desire for independence into a somnambulistic state, through promises, delays and an undemocratic, self-appointed mission to ‘Stop Brexit’, deflating the core of independence supporter of both sides of the Leave/Remain divide who, for different reasons, wanted her to focus on Scotland. Yet the worst was still to come. By seeming to sanctify and prioritise a minority group of radicals and their demands over basic, important, bread and butter issues, Sturgeon embraced Irrationality and went to war with Reason.

The pivot towards pushing a bizarrely cultish ideology that barely makes sense yet has the disquieting outcome of inserting the state between members of the family and inserting a lead plate between connecting parts of the brain bled away enough of the backing of the common sense constituency to make her resignation, at some point, inevitable. Why should schools hide from parents and carers their child’s gender issues or their possible body dysmorphia or potential mental health issues? Why is there not psychological-biological protocols for people who wish to identify as another sex? Why are women’s views and rights being undermined? Why is the Scottish government funding academics who extoll an unhealthy sexual liberation in children and adolescents? The dangers are obvious. It is as blatantly insane as allowing proven rapists to self-identify as women and be moved to female prisons. In any world, that is madness.

Madness. Now add corruption. The prosecution of Alex Salmond was a bell-weather of the more overt lawlessness Sturgeon’s government was prepared practise (her use of mandates during Covid being the most immoral). Many people might not like Alex Salmond and there had been many, many rumours about him liking female company over the years. And, it may be the case that, as a person, there is an unappealing, maybe very unappealing, side to his character. However, the indictments against Alex Salmond were dubious...at best. Leaving aside the most serious allegation, why a Procurator Fiscal would deem that charges should follow on those accusations with the poverty of evidence disclosed is extremely puzzling. Extremely puzzling. It is hard to see a motivation for justice and not see political machinations at work. When we remember that these complaints followed after previous claims about sexual harassment where, in an unprecedented action, the Scottish civil service changed its rules in order to punish him retrospectively, then it is harder and harder not to see vindictive motives behind the veil. Sturgeon was either pawn in this or party. The head of the civil service, who was found to have acted improperly, astonishingly remained in post - despite losing £500 000 of civic cash to Salmond for compensation -as did the Procurator Fiscal who wasted millions of taxpayers money and allowed his own service to be politicised as a vehicle for political witch-hunts.

Tribalising institutions is a horrific legacy to leave for a leader since they can become self-propelling mechanisms that abandon the common good, discriminating and persecuting those not fortunate to be in the ‘clan’. Justice and Truth are ejected in preference to upholding an ideological view: a condition of ‘them’ and ‘us’ is born - very dangerous for society. It is the second most harmful division that Nicola Sturgeon oversaw and has bequeathed the country. However, before we mention that final schism, possibly the final brake cable to snap plunging the Political Cable Car that is the First Minister to her doom was the investigation into the SNP’s finances. Several years ago, reminiscent of the ‘one more push’ that never took the Allied forces to Berlin in World War One, the SNP launched a political fundraiser to fight the upcoming referendum. Six hundred thousand pounds was raised, then disappeared. Where had it gone? It was, replied the SNP Treasurer, ‘woven through the accounts’. What does that mean? According to the office holder, in a practical sense, the money is there under different headings. Why not keep it in the one place, ring-fenced, as the SNP hierarchy promised? No. Where is it exactly? Can you show us? Why have you borrowed £100 000 from the Secretary of the party?

Silence. Not answering questions when you’re politically dominant is an approach that can work for years until people finally grasp what contempt you have for them. To those who never accepted or came to query the Covid narrative, it was a disdain Nicola Sturgeon held that was so brazenly obvious that at some points you did not know how the leader of a government could either keep a straight-face or did not completely betray herself by speaking to the population in words of two syllables or less. Wear a mask - take it off - take it off, put it on at the bar, if in a restaurant - wear it in class; don’t wear it in class, but wear it in the corridor - shut down the country; keep superstores and McDonalds open. Incredible! An experimental, untested vaccine was rolled out and made Sturgeon’s heart ‘jump for joy’ when it could be given to under sixteens. Unforgivable! It is nearly impossible to argue that Nicola Sturgeon did not know that this entire programme was criminal, including her cruel and literally deadly ‘mandates’ for those most vulnerable: her care home policy during the first lockdown. Malfeasance is certain; conscious complicity…?

It is possible, given the labyrinthine nature of politics, that she was playing out a role to protect the Scottish people from some powerful, global and inter-governmental organisation or group. It’s possible. However, as time progresses, matters will reveal themselves: if the excess death rates continue, if there has been cataclysmic damage done to young people’s fertility, if the illnesses and injuries of healthy people persist in multiplying, then we will know that the litany of incompetence and corruption is merely a prelude to her vicious immorality as a person and her participation in the greatest lawless atrocity ever visited on the Scottish People and Humanity. If so, then her resignation is an attempt to get out ‘just in time’.

Yesterday, in her press conference, Nicola Sturgeon used the word ‘independence’ eleven times: she used the words ‘I’ or ‘me’ one hundred and thirteen times. This was the Sturgeon Years, an exercise in personal narcissism starting with a Messiah complex constellated around independence and ending in a Saviour one born out of the Covid Hoax. Throughout her needs were paramount and the rest of us will have to try to reverse the consequences of the toxic, literally toxic for millions of Scots due to the experimental, poisonous vaccines injected into their bodies, policies she promoted.