Latest news with #English-dominated
New Statesman
15 hours ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Nicola Sturgeon is finally free
Nicola Sturgeon has no shortage of critics. Since the latter period of her almost decade-long spell as Scotland's first minister, which began as long ago as 2014, judgement has been regularly and freely cast, particularly in the two years since she stepped down. It has, more often than not, found her wanting: for her slim track record in office, as a controlling boss, as a leader who failed on too many fronts. On her own side of the constitutional debate, she is regarded by some as the woman who blew any chance of securing independence. Frankly – a memoir – is not quite her revenge, but it is a determined and self-excavating effort to explain herself. 'The fact is I am neither the hero that my most ardent supporters revere, nor the villain that my fiercest critics revile,' she writes. The book reveals something more than that – a bruised, tormented soul, who disappeared into politics at a tender age and struggled to find an identity outside of it, a superstar frontwoman who persistently wrestled with self-doubt. This isn't quite a misery memoir, though at times it feels that way. This is no surprise given the trying circumstances in which it was written. There is much end-of-day weeping over glasses of wine as she tries to cope with the brutality and frustrations of political life and the complexity of her private existence. But Frankly also tells the impressive story of a working-class girl who climbed all the way to the top, on her own terms, who dominated her nation for the best part of a decade and became an international figure. At the height of her popularity, Sturgeon enjoyed an unprecedentedly strong and intimate bond with many Scots – they saw themselves reflected in the apparent ordinariness of 'our Nicola'. She is far from ordinary, revealing herself over more than 400 intense pages. A lifelong battle with shyness and impostor syndrome coexists with an indomitable drive to succeed. As a child, she was bookish and withdrawn. But 'alongside shyness, a crippling lack of confidence and a dreadful fear of failure,' Sturgeon writes, she also had 'a very strong sense of 'destiny'; a feeling that whatever I did in life would not be 'ordinary', that it would attract attention.' Born in 1970, the future leader of the SNP grew up in Dreghorn, an Ayrshire village that had long subsisted on coal mining. Her outlook was formed, as with so many of her generation, by the impact of Thatcherite industrial reforms on her community. Mass unemployment and a widespread absence of hope persuaded young Sturgeon that the only way for Scotland to protect itself was to become independent, to rid itself of unsympathetic Tory governments and English-dominated decision-making in the UK. Labour, the only Westminster alternative, was shifting rightwards under Neil Kinnock, which cemented her opposition to the London establishment. From the 1980s, the SNP was moving away from its old 'Tartan Tories' reputation under a new generation of left-wingers. Most prominent was a gifted young MP called Alex Salmond. It was here Sturgeon found her 'destiny', the home and the cause that would define her life. The ouroboros-like relationship between Salmond and Sturgeon sits at the heart of this book. He was her mentor, promoting her time and again. They worked closely together as the SNP rose, even if the bond was one of convenience. If she found his titanic ego and alpha-male approach infuriating, she also appreciated his strategic brilliance. Only when Sturgeon succeeded Salmond as first minister, after loss in the independence referendum of 2014, did this 'dream team' shatter. Allegations of Salmond's sexual impropriety, starting in 2018, were the final straw. Though he was cleared in court of the charges against him, he blamed his former protégé for plotting to ruin his reputation. Some in the independence movement still believe this. But Sturgeon argues Salmond was no victim of conspiracy, with her critics unable to 'produce a shred of hard evidence that he was'. Worse: 'In the course of his trial, and in what he told me face to face, Alex admitted that he had acted towards women in ways that weren't always acceptable,' Sturgeon recounts. 'What unfolded was firmly rooted in his own conduct.' Salmond's anger towards her was, she says, based on her refusal to block the investigation into his behaviour. This 'would have been a betrayal of the women concerned and, in some ways, of all women,' she writes, 'proof – yet again – that powerful men with powerful connections can get away with anything.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The loss of this friendship led to what Sturgeon describes as 'a grieving process'. On Salmond's sudden death last year during a speaking engagement in North Macedonia, she went through it all again. 'I was hit by a wave of emotion much stronger than I would have anticipated,' she writes. 'Part of me still misses him, or at least misses the man I thought he was and the relationship we once had.' Ultimately, though, her judgement is that 'he died without reckoning with himself'. This is a memoir whose strength lies in its author's relentless reckoning with herself. Through her eight years as first minister, Sturgeon pursued a progressive agenda that sought to shape Scotland as a distinctively liberal, empathetic nation. The fact that Scotland, outside of her own political echo chamber, is no such thing never seems to have occurred to her. With her attentions elsewhere, Sturgeon failed to make much progress in office, whether in reforming public services or in growing the economy. But she is open enough to probe her mistakes, to question her decisions. Her finest, and most challenging, moment came with Covid. She gave it everything, sleeping only a few hours each night, living on flasks of soup provided by a friend and 'in a permanent state of nervous tension'. Sturgeon's daily televised briefings throughout the pandemic, where she was honest about what the government did and did not know, and why it was restricting people's liberty, were a reassurance to those who tuned in. 'I am still haunted by the impact of the decisions I took and those I didn't take,' she says. Famously, she broke down on the witness stand during her evidence to the Covid inquiry: 'I hadn't properly considered the emotional impact of being confronted with everything my worst critics wanted people to believe of me. That in managing Covid, I was politically motivated. That I had acted in bad faith. That I hadn't been transparent. That I was a control freak.' Whether or not 'control freak' is putting it too strongly, Sturgeon inarguably ran her government with the tightest of grips. Her ministers were not allowed much freedom of thought or leeway. The girl who swotted her way through school, who always tried to know more about everything than anyone else, was still present in the adult. It is here that comparisons with Margaret Thatcher find a justified echo: a woman in what was largely still a male-dominated climate, she felt judged more harshly than if she had been of the opposite sex. This may go some way towards explaining the defensive brittleness and the punchy aggression that occasionally surfaced and that led to the 'nippy sweetie' nickname; she was protecting herself. As her ministry aged, there was another possible comparison to Thatcher. Criticisms and scandals accumulated, and Sturgeon's circle of trust shrank. She began to rely more heavily on her own instincts – the classic mistake made by long-servers who come to view themselves as untouchable. Sturgeon speaks of emotional intelligence as the most important quality in any leader, but towards the end of her tenure this seems to have deserted her entirely. Fatally, she was unable to see the other side of any argument. Which bring us to gender reform, the policy that played a key role in her downfall. It was here that Sturgeon, ran into an opponent she could not defeat: her fellow women. Though she paints herself as a passionate feminist throughout this book, her reputation among many today is that of someone who has betrayed her sex. When confronted with the case of the convicted rapist Isla Bryson, a transgender woman who had been sent to a women-only prison, Sturgeon was unable to say whether Bryson was a man or a woman. Her dismissal of gender-critical feminists as bigots and transphobes was foolish, leading to JK Rowling appearing in a T-shirt with the legend 'Nicola Sturgeon – destroyer of women's rights'. It set the scene for a pitched battle that continues today. For all the damage done to the trans cause by her handling of the affair, Sturgeon believes she was in the right, even if she 'lost the dressing room'. She admits that 'there are things I would certainly try to do better', and accepts it might have been wise to 'hit the pause button'. But she isn't one to back down. 'Those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety… Nothing feels further from the truth,' she insists. 'One day we will look back on this period in history and be collectively horrified at the vilification trans people have been subjected to.' As the politics became ever harder, Sturgeon's personal life was dragged into the muck. A police investigation into alleged misuse of SNP funds led to not only her arrest but that of her husband, the then SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell. With a crime-scene tent set up in her garden, which 'looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me', she was forced to flee to her parents' house and then to a friend's in north-east Scotland. She came close to a mental breakdown. Though she was eventually cleared, Murrell faces charges of embezzlement. The pressure from the scandal led to the couple's separation. From the heights of power to the trough of despair, the mighty had fallen. Her relentless attempts to secure a second independence referendum had amounted to naught. Exhausted and conscious of just how divisive a figure she had become, Sturgeon stepped down as first minister in 2023. She was at her lowest, and any prospect of a glittering subsequent career – it had been mooted that she might work for the UN on climate change or child poverty – had been destroyed by scandal. In the final pages, following so much catharsis, hope finally enters the picture. 'The process of writing this book has helped me arrive at a more balanced sense of myself,' she says. She now spends time with friends and family, reads her beloved novels whenever she feels like it, writes literary criticism – including for the New Statesman – and is considering authoring a crime novel of her own. She even got herself a tattoo. 'I am living in the moment in a way I have never managed to do before. As a result, and in spite of everything, I am probably happier now than I have ever been.' One wonders whether, given her complex temperament, Sturgeon might have enjoyed life more had she steered clear of politics. But her will to power was too great. She was all in, charismatic yet divisive, sometimes arrogant but an incurable introvert. She left a legacy that will be debated for years to come. She has given us the rawest possible account of a remarkable but painful journey. Only her harshest antagonists will begrudge her the happiness she has found at last. Frankly Nicola Sturgeon Pan Macmillan 480pp, £28 Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See also: Nigel Farage's Trump-Vance delusion] Related
The National
2 days ago
- Business
- The National
If Scotland is so poor, why does Westminster resist independence?
This from a Westminster government that has run a deficit for my entire life, hence the continual increase in borrowing. In 2010, when the Tories came to power, the debt was £1.3 trillion. Under their governance, it's now reached well north of £2 trillion, despite the years of austerity that decimated our public services and which may take a generation or more to repair. WATCH: Expert debunks everything you've been told about Scottish 'deficit' Westminster has trashed the economy and then has the temerity to apportion 'our share' of that debt accrued to we Scots who had no influence in its creation. We Scots are paying for vanity projects we can never benefit from, nor do we have any influence over the political choices that waste money wholesale across the economy, while having also to bear continually higher interest rates, low wages, energy poverty and housing crises. GERS is a manufactured illusion designed to portray Scotland as bad and weak. This is the same bad and weak Scotland that English-dominated Westminster is desperate to hold on to. Why? Because we know they have long taken Scotland's resources and poured them into the UK financial cesspit to prop it up, and fully intend to do so going forward. It's they who can't afford Scotland's independence, not us. Common sense reveals that if these GERS figures were correct, Scotland would be independent by now, and Westminster would be driving it. READ MORE: Scottish Secretary Ian Murray reacts to latest GERS figures Independent, with full political and economic control, we could divest ourselves of the UK's sick economy of Europe that's long lived off its size and reputation rather than ability and strength, and build a stronger future for our descendants. Independence now is our imperative. Don't we urgently need an indy road map drawn with courage and determination rather than a seemingly cosy wee 'vote for us and we'll see what we can do' promise with the indy can kicked farther down the road? Jim Taylor Scotland THERE has been a significant increase in the number of people complaining about various plans or the lack of. Each inventor assumes that their specific plan is infallible and can produce the outcome we all seek. This is putting the cart before the horse. The problem most authors make is to not take account of the forces arrayed against us or the practical realities of plans being implemented. In most cases we probably need a combination of plans rather than just one. The circumstances at the time will dictate which plan or plans can or cannot be used. Creating plans is valid, and each of them goes on a shelf ready to be used when the time and circumstances are appropriate, as with preparing for contingencies like defence or pandemics. None of them have on their own any degree of certainty, and it remains essential that flexibility in argument and implementation is maintained. READ MORE: GERS figures show Scottish Government revenue growing faster than spending Fundamentally though, the prerequisite for pursuing any of the plans is a reliable majority of voters to start the process off. We can have as many plans as we like, but without that recognisable majority none of them can ever get off the ground. None of the plans actually recognises the need to convince people, probably because the only people who devise them speak to the already converted. If that enthusiasm and dedication were directed at those who are not converted, we would stand a much better chance of success. Internal arguments about plans get in the way of the primary need to convince a solid and consistent majority. Without that majority support, it doesn't matter whether it is Alex Salmond's ghost, John Swinney, Kenny MacAskill or somebody else leading the charge with whichever masterful plan is valid at the time. Arguing about who has the best and infallible plan is a futile waste of time and effort. Nick Cole Meigle, Perthshire OH how I really wish I shared Stan Grodynski's optimistic attitude to the leadership of the SNP in his recent letter headed 'An emphatic win for the SNP will mean no excuses for inaction' (Aug 13). I assume to help achieve this 'emphatic win' independence supporters will be asked to vote SNP on both ballot papers in May 2026. That election is now less than nine months away. A week is indeed a long time in politics, but my gut feeling is that we are heading for a result, at best, similar to the 2021 election – the SNP as the largest party but without an overall majority and another coalition with the Greens a very distinct and unfortunate possibility. READ MORE: The two plans for achieving independence are surely not incompatible I see little current evidence that Alba or any other of the small parties which support independence will reach the threshold required to turn list votes into list seats. To do so now would need the SNP to approve of their supporters voting for another independence-supporting party on the list. I see no chance of that happening any time soon. In addition, a potentially lacklustre and possibly poorly financed SNP campaign will see hundreds of thousands of independence supporters simply staying at home. The million or so SNP supporters who do vote may see their list votes result in a few extra SNP and Green candidates elected while the Unionist parties, now including Reform UK, will fill up the remaining large number of available list seats. It will be Groundhog Day – May 2021 all over again. If the SNP do really well and achieve a majority of MSPs, sadly I fear post-May 2026 there may suddenly appear a vast myriad of 'excuses for inaction'. The most obvious of which will be 'Keir Starmer just telt us NO'. The political ball will then be firmly bounced back into the SNP's court. The new SNP leader (assuming John Swinney has left the post) will have to decide on some very uncharacteristic radical action or meekly accept five more years of Donald Dewar devolution. Brian Lawson Paisley
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Who Is Tota MC? Meet Streamer University's Viral Brazilian Star
Image via: tota_ofc/Instagram In this ever changing streaming world, with new voices emerging almost daily, this person has risen with great speed and attraction. Relatively new to the scene, the Brazilian streamer is one of the best participants of the high-profile incubator for fledgling creators, the so-called "Streamer University" by Kai Cenat. From São Paulo Beats to Streaming Rockstar Before entering the realm of Twitch, Tota used to be recognized widely in the underground music scene of Brazil as a music producer. This creative energy combined with a fast wit went down smoothly through his entry into streaming in April 2024. Early on, his "Just Chatting" streams, which were part social commentary and part entertainment, gained modest attention amongst Portuguese-speaking-ranked people, eventually transcending borders. What makes Tota special is his emphasis on interactivity. He does not merely react to trending clips or memes; it's a connection that builds, thus sparking the engagement that dissolves the division typically perceived between shows and the show audience. This genuineness has skyrocketed him from 31,000 followers in early 2025 to over 174,000 in a matter of months. Instagram sings a very similar tune, with a devoted 143,000 fans looking to catch his daily antics. A Seat at the Big Table: Streamer University An influencer of the magnitude of Cenat himself had heard about Tota's rise and so invited him into Streamer University — the very first content training camp going on from May 22 to May 25, 2025. It is shaped by Cenat alongside AMP's Duke Dennis, rapper DDG, streaming star India Love, and cooking personality Kya 'Cookingwitkya' to fast-track newly discovered talents. For Tota, this is way beyond being the spotlight; it is a master class in global streaming culture. Apart from learning from internet veterans, he is showing that language and geography are no longer obstacles in achieving digital fame. TOTA Is the New DUKE DENNIS at Streamer University! 😂🔥 Representing a Brazilian Voice on the World Scene The story of Tota MC is a story of representation as well, about numbers and viral moments. As a Portuguese-speaking creator gaining traction in an English-dominated space, his stake in Streamer University signals a growing shift in what global influence looks like online. With grit, hustle, and so much cultural pride, Tota MC is not just learning — he is leading. Clearly, this is but the beginning of this chapter. Get IPL 2025 match schedules , squads , points table , and live scores for CSK , MI , RCB , KKR , SRH , LSG , DC , GT , PBKS , and RR . Check the latest IPL Orange Cap and Purple Cap standings.
