Nicola Sturgeon: How I ruined her referendum campaign

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

As we donate well-thumbed copies to the charity shop (having first erased any sarky notes in the margins), I think we can agree it's been fun delving into the past, but let's get back to the here and now.
Except not everyone is ready to retire from the fray just yet. There was always a danger that Ms Sturgeon's memoirs would bring grievances to the surface again. The combative personality of the author and the turbulent times she was writing about, particularly the referendum, made that inevitable.
Even so, some of the reaction has been fairly shocking in its intensity. We are now 11 years on, but if you look on social media or any comment forum it is summer 2014 all over again, and not in a good way. Was that really us? Did we say that, do that, think that? And if it was as bad as it looks, should Scotland follow the example of Ms Sturgeon and seek counselling?
BTW, I thought it a poor take on her fellow citizens when she revealed her initial reluctance to ask for help. 'I'm from the West of Scotland,' she told the Sunday Times. 'We don't do things like that! Working-class west of Scotland, Ayrshire, my God, I would never have.' Actually, Nicola, I think you'll find times have changed and here in the west of Scotland we are hoaching with therapists. Counselling is now seen as part of taking care of yourself, like going to the gym.
As any therapist will tell you, the first step in tackling any problem is acknowledging you have one.
JK Rowling - you knew she'd turn up at some point - had a few things to say on the referendum and other matters in her review of Frankly. In her opinion, both Ms Sturgeon and Alex Salmond made great play of the idea that Scotland produced 'a kinder, better type of nationalist'.
'Oddly,' she added, 'this message didn't resonate too well with No voters who were being threatened with violence, told to **** off out of Scotland, quizzed on the amount of Scottish blood that ran in their veins, accused of treachery and treason …' There is more, but you get the idea.
Contrast this with Ms Sturgeon's breezy assessment of the campaign as 'in the main, positive and good-natured'.
How can two such opinions meet in the middle? Even if they could, there is plenty of beef between those two to keep them fighting till both receive birthday telegrams from the Palace.
Speaking of reactions, I had an odd, Zelig-like experience while reading Frankly. You might say I was 'triggered'. Whatever the term, I was left with a face redder than one of the jackets Ms Sturgeon swears by when she needs a confidence boost.
There I was, innocently reading the section on the referendum when the author mentioned a programme I had worked on and what an awful time she had on it. Cue the beamer and a cold sweat. Oh no, I thought, what was she about to say?
She acknowledged her mood that day wasn't great, and it was made worse by patchy briefings on key issues such as the currency and EU membership. Anyway, she rocked up to the Question Time-style debate and everything went downhill from there. 'The audience's scepticism quickly became obvious,' she wrote.
As she left the BBC that night, something was bothering her, a worry that turned into 'a significant problem' as the campaign went on. 'There was a palpable imbalance in how the British media, the BBC in particular, covered the referendum.'
So there you are, it was my fault. Like Eve in Eden, the rot started with me and the rest of the team. I had ruined her night, and her referendum.
But no, hang on, here's Ms Sturgeon again in another of her short-lived changes of heart. 'I am not claiming that journalists were biased,' she says, before doing precisely that. 'In a sign of what was to come,' she concluded, 'all of the set-piece audience questions in that BBC debate were, from the perspective of independence, loaded and pejorative.'
If she had known the lengths to which the programme had gone to ensure balance she might have thought differently. Every person in that audience had been quizzed and quizzed again to establish their position, if they had one, so that the audience could fairly represent Scottish public opinion. Most importantly, the questions were written by audience members. Not framed, not edited, all their own doing. The lesson that Ms Sturgeon should have taken away was that people were genuinely concerned about the currency, EU membership and other issues.
As becomes clear elsewhere in the memoir, they were right to be sceptical. According to Ms Sturgeon, Alex Salmond had only read 'bits' of the White Paper before it was published, a claim his supporters have rubbished. This is the same White Paper, it should be said, that caused her to have a panic attack.
The stakes were high, of course they were. People were being asked to decide the future of their country. They wanted to know if their families and homes and pensions would be safe. The questions were not 'loaded and pejorative', they were direct and sincere.
As it turned out, Ms Surgeon wasn't the only one who was unhappy after the programme. All the politicians had a moan about being given a hard time. I took that as a good thing. Others may disagree.
That's the point. Everyone had their own experience of the referendum. For some it was exciting, the time of their lives, but that was not the case for everyone. Do we need to talk about that? Do we want to? Let's park it till the paperback comes out. That's one position we can all get behind.