4 days ago
GRAHAM GRANT: Sturgeon's book is heavy on chat-show revelations but ignores the SNP's hubris, self-delusion and long record of failure
Nicola Sturgeon has had something of an epiphany in recent days – she shouldn't have pushed so hard on her calamitous gender reforms.
The sound of a stable door slamming shut came as the former First Minister publicised her forthcoming memoir, optimistically entitled Frankly.
She didn't anticipate how divisive gender self-ID would be – which is hard to swallow – but she still can't bring herself to disown the policy.
The autobiography and the accompanying ITV interview are heavy on revisionism, as you'd expect, with a hefty dose of blame-shifting for good measure.
Ms Sturgeon could have said sorry for the gender shambles and the damage it did to her party, and admit that she got it badly wrong.
There are many in the SNP who would warmly welcome such a mea culpa, with an election in nine months, but they will have to keep waiting.
True, she says she is 'partly responsible' for a loss of 'rationality' in the debate – but only 'partly'. Who else was First Minister at the time?
Talking about transgender rapist Isla Bryson, Ms Sturgeon says anyone who 'commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be the gender of their choice' – but only 'probably'.
Ironically, the only thing she does take credit for is the White Paper on independence ahead of the 2014 referendum – she says Alex Salmond wasn't interested in helping her – but you'd think she'd want to distance herself from that particular work of fantasy.
She's right to say that 'people with very low emotional intelligence are probably disproportionately attracted' to politics – though she doesn't seem to realise that she is one of them.
Ms Sturgeon reflects and embodies the many deficiencies of the SNP: hubris, self-delusion, self-pity – and a long record of failure.
Her patchy powers of recall while in office led to evasive performances before parliamentary committees.
This social justice warrior is happy to bank the cash for a half-baked exercise in blaming everyone else for her own mistakes – heavy on chat-show revelations about her sexuality and even a new tattoo, and decidedly low on any hint of self-awareness.
It's clear that she wants to stake a claim to some kind of political achievement and to be taken seriously – her book is part of a quest for relevance and credibility.
Aside from the tawdry, confessional stuff about the difficulties of her private life, it's beyond sickening that Ms Sturgeon is desperately trying to craft for herself an elder stateswoman status for which she could never be eligible.
She kept Scotland trapped in a constitutional doom-loop and left a devastating legacy in the form of a failing education system, stunted economic growth and punitive taxation.
Drug deaths soared to record levels while policing was brought to its knees and our navel-gazing, laughing-stock parliament wasted valuable time on the SNP's gender obsession.
Elsewhere in the UK, Ms Sturgeon was often regarded, inexplicably, as a safe pair of hands and even an inspirational figure.
Her allies in the commentariat were blind to the truth – that she failed on every aspect of her government's domestic agenda and created a corrosive culture of secrecy in a vast civil service machine which has become hopelessly politicised under Nationalist control.
Supporters point to Ms Sturgeon's handling of the Covid pandemic – she says the ordeal of giving evidence at the public inquiry drove her to the edge of a breakdown, though it's likely that the same could be said of many of the bereaved who lost relatives to the illness.
In fact, many of the claims Ms Sturgeon made about Scotland's success in battling Covid were baseless, or hugely exaggerated.
'Zero Covid' was touted as a flagship SNP policy before being quietly binned as case rates rose, and we know that despite her denials at the time party hierarchs saw the national crisis as a good moment to push their independence agenda.
Rightly, Ms Sturgeon faced a huge backlash over revelations that she and her senior mandarins deleted their WhatsApp messages during the pandemic.
They claimed that mass deletion was in line with government guidance – but the families of Covid victims understandably alleged a cover-up.
There were similar allegations when Ms Sturgeon clung to office after the Salmond debacle by citing the outcome of a report by a former prosecutor who cleared her of breaching the ministerial code – in perhaps the most heavily redacted report in Holyrood's history.
There was no uprising among her acolytes who backed her in a confidence vote.
The party rallied round Ms Sturgeon in a display of weapons-grade sycophancy – Jeane Freeman, Health Secretary at the time, hailed the then First Minister as 'most excellent' as she denied her boss had misled MSPs.
In reality, it was a dismal period during which some of the key institutions of state were dragged into the mire to save Ms Sturgeon's neck.
Now she has angered friends of her former mentor, Mr Salmond, by claiming he leaked details of a botched in-house probe into sexual harassment complaints against him.
He's not here to give his side of the story, but what's indisputable is that he believed he was the victim of a conspiracy, and the ensuing fiasco – which saw him take the government he once led to court, and win – led to an eye-watering bill for taxpayers.
Settling scores with someone who died nearly a year ago is unedifying, but don't forget that there are books to shift.
Ms Sturgeon, bitter and isolated in the political wilderness, is still consumed by the psychodrama of the rift with her old boss – a pivotal moment in her life and career.
The rest of us, who were forced to look on from the sidelines, are still counting the cost of Ms Sturgeon's reign.
Her erstwhile deputy, lame-duck John Swinney, presents himself as a new dawn for a broken party and an exhausted country which longs for change.
Yet he was an integral part of the Sturgeon administration – a loyal consigliere and enforcer who continues to back her radical stance on gender.
Sturgeonism, such as it is, lives on in Mr Swinney, who was left to mop up a mess partly of his own creation.
Doubtless he will turn quickly to the index of Ms Sturgeon's book, like many of his colleagues, searching for his own name.
Memoirs are an act of remembrance – but for many Scots the Sturgeon years are better forgotten.
