She was, until the end, the consummate communicator, the master of deception, the untouchable queen of political evasion. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon held a press conference at her official Edinburgh residence, Bute House, shortly after 11am yesterday and confirmed the rumor that she had shocked the Scottish political establishment in the previous hours.
His resignation speech was riddled with the kind of meaningless platitudes one might expect in such circumstances. Being First Minister of Scotland was the best job in the world. It had been a privilege beyond measure to serve.
These formalities are dispensed with, Miss Sturgeon He went on to list all the downsides of what seemed less like the best job in the world and more like a well-paid prison sentence. There was no time for anything but work, the pressure was relentless and politics was a “brutal” business.
At this delicate moment, only the truly heartless would point out that the brutality that currently marks our political debate has flourished thanks to the type of rhetoric deployed by Miss Sturgeon, proud despiser of the Conservatives, a great ally of those who gather outside the BBC to hurl insults . in the staff.
The truth is that the First Minister’s popularity within the SNP ranks has plummeted in recent months due to her crazy plan to treat the next general election as a “de facto” referendum. Yesterday we witnessed a classic example of someone jumping before being pushed.
Resignation: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon makes her announcement
If, one journalist asked, Miss Sturgeon couldn’t lead her party to independence, who could? She wasn’t going to get into who, but (and, to her great credit, she kept a straight face at this point) the SNP was “flooded with talented individuals”.
One wonders who he was referring to? Perhaps Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil: a man who, if the phone rang while he was ironing a shirt, would burn his ear.
Or perhaps he was thinking of SNP deputy leader Keith Brown, a politician with the permanent air of someone who walks into a room only to forget why he did so? Or could it have been Emma Harper MSP, whose answer to questions about currency in an independent Scotland is that people in Mexico accept credit cards?
The people of Scotland, Miss Sturgeon predicted, would enjoy watching the talent that would be on display in the coming weeks and, if that were the code, the people of Scotland would be horrified to discover how imbeciles have managed to get positions as politicians thanks to your friends in the SNP, who could disagree?
In a line that, if she ever wrote one, could open her self-help book, the First Minister said that having spent most of her life being Nicola Sturgeon, the politician, the time had come to make time for Nicola Sturgeon , person.
I hoped that didn’t sound selfish, which, depending on one’s tolerance for nonsense, was either deeply touching or remarkably selfish. According to an analysis by Spectator magazine, he used the words ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’ 153 times in his speech. Meanwhile, the word “Scotland” was only mentioned 11 times. Most Scots, tired of Miss Sturgeon’s monomaniacal obsession with independence, I am sure will take a view on the matter.
Cruelly, one of those gathered yesterday reminded the Prime Minister of her earlier request that she be judged on her management of the education system and its success in closing the attainment gap between children from the poorest and richest backgrounds. Given that success in that area is equal to the square root of hee-haw, has it failed those young people?
Nicola Sturgeon dramatically resigned as leader of the SNP today after a collapse over her attempt to relax gender identity rules and fading prospects of breaking up the UK.
No, he hadn’t. But of course, in Miss Sturgeon’s view, success is not achieved by creating tangible results. Success exists the moment you declare it.
Thus, when support for independence waned following her refusal to say whether a rapist is a man or a woman and her “de facto” referendum, the First Minister felt able to say that she firmly believed that the majority of Scots supported independence. independence.
Maybe that got to the heart of the question of why he goes. When political leaders completely lose touch with reality, the game truly is over.