There are two stories that explain the history of Scottish
nationalism and devolution since 1999. One is the public story that reached its
latest chapter with Nicola Sturgeon’s testimony before the Covid inquiry. This
public story is of the rise of SNP from a fringe party with a few MPs to its peak
in 2015 when it won nearly all the MPs and might if it had been held those few months
later a referendum. That peak has now been followed by a precipitous fall that
has destroyed not only the reputation of Nicola Sturgeon, but also the concept
of Scottish devolution in its present form.
It's possible to come up with a history of what
happened since 1999 based on what is publicly available, but it doesn’t tell us
why it happened. The story of why things happened as they did and indeed why we
ended up with Sturgeon crying over spilt messages is largely secret, but I think
it can be reconstructed using what we do know and a little reasoning.
Nicola Sturgeon was a candidate in the 1992 General
Election but lost. She stood again in 1997 but lost. She stood again for Glasgow
Govan at the 1999 Scottish parliament election but lost. Under normal circumstances
that might have ended her political career. She could have gone back to being
not very good at law and we would never have heard of her again.
Some village-Hampden,
that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Sturgeon guiltless of her country's blood.
What saved Sturgeon’s career was that she was first in
the SNP’s regional list for Glasgow. Why was she first? It may have had to do
with her talent, but in the end, it had to do with Alex Salmond. He was leader
of the SNP, and he would have had a say in such matters.
Sturgeon was immediately put in Alex Salmond’s shadow
cabinet. So, Salmond gave Sturgeon her start. She might have remained an
obscure SNP MSP but for him.
In 2000 Alex Salmond resigned. Why? He much later
expressed regret over this. The reasoning given in the newspapers of the time
looks insufficient. I have never read a convincing reason for why Salmond resigned.
He was replaced by John Swinney, who is nice but nobody
and not even that nice. If Swinney had continued as leader the SNP would not
have made its breakthrough in 2007, would not have won an overall majority in
2011 and would not have had a referendum in 2014.
Salmond became leader again in 2004 so whatever caused
him to resign in 2000 no longer applied or at least he thought it no longer
applied.
Nicola Sturgeon became Salmond’s depute and leader in the
Scottish parliament as Salmond didn’t have a seat there at the time.
Salmond and Sturgeon were clearly close. There are
pictures which suggest a closeness that would be unusual in politicians. They
appear to be close friends. Salmond is Sturgeon’s mentor, and she owes her
position almost entirely to him.
We then have a period that is entirely shrouded in mystery
that was covered by Alex Salmond’s trial. While Salmond was resident in Bute
House it is possible that he lived as a monk in his cell, but that would make
what happened later inexplicable. A number of women allegedly SNP politicians
and Scottish civil servants accused Salmond of a variety of sexual offences. Again,
it could be that these accusations were simply made up and that Salmond the
monk never misbehaved in any way. We don’t know. We were not there.
If I were to speculate, I would guess that Salmond
socialised with other politicians and perhaps had relationships that were
closer than they ought to have been. He used his power and his charisma in a
way that men have been doing since Henry VIII. He began to think he could get
away with anything, because on the whole he could. Perhaps occasionally his
behaviour could be misconstrued or became such as the Queen might put it that recollections
may vary.
But whatever happened in the years prior to the
referendum no one thought it serious enough to tell the police, the media or
the voters. If the revelations about Salmond that came out prior to and during
his trial had come out in 2014 then he would have had to resign as leader of
that campaign, and it is very likely that the Yes vote would not have reached
anywhere close to 44%.
We can conclude that members of the SNP and civil
servants considered that winning the referendum was more important than revealing
whatever Salmond was or was not doing in Bute House. This is where the secrecy
at the heart of the SNP really begins.
Having lost the referendum Salmond resigned. Why? I
have never understood this. He clearly wanted to continue in politics as the
years after have shown. He performed well during the campaign and although Yes
supporters were disappointed, they had come very far very fast. Salmond didn’t
have to resign. Why did he?
The fact that Salmond did resign suggests strongly
that he did not think whatever had happened in Bute House would be a problem.
If Salmond had remained First Minister there would have been no investigation
by the Scottish government into his alleged behaviour, there would have been no
gathering of witnesses, because there would have been no Nicola Sturgeon.
Now here we begin to see something of the duplicitous
nature of Nicola Sturgeon. Salmond must have been confident that he was leaving
the independence movement and his own life in good hands. He could not have foreseen
in any way how Sturgeon would betray him.
It could have been Alex Salmond who was leading the SNP
when it won nearly all the seats in 2015 and it was really his victory, but it
was Nicola Sturgeon who took the adulation and had enormous crowds at the
Glasgow Hydro treating her as the second coming of Roberta the Bruce.
But what caused her to turn on Salmond? She didn’t
have to. All of this is secret. Was Salmond really such a threat to Sturgeon
that she thought it necessary to eliminate him. But in what way was he a
threat? Again, we don’t know, and it is hard to imagine. Salmond has had no
power at all since ceasing to be First Minister.
From being a reasonably normal party in 1999 and even
up to the years prior to the independence campaign, the SNP and especially Nicola
Sturgeon by the beginning of the pandemic have become so secretive that we know
next to nothing about the inner workings of the Scottish government or the SNP.
Scotland in 2020 was neither run by a parliament nor
by a government nor by a cabinet, it was run by Sturgeon and her husband with
the help of some senior civil servants. We know what was decided, but we don’t
know why. We know that large numbers of messages were deleted, but we don’t
know what they contained and indeed why they were deleted.
It would have been embarrassing for Sturgeon to be
heard swearing or being flippant or talking about how it was necessary to be
different to England to help the cause of independence, but none of these
things would have been as damaging as what did happen, admitting she lied when
she said she would make the messages available when she knew they had already
been deleted.
So, it is reasonable to assume that there was
something so bad in her private messages that it was worth it to risk deleting
them. What could be that bad?
We then have Sturgeon’s resignation. Again, we don’t
have reasonable explanation for why she resigned or what connection if any it
had with the subsequent revelations about SNP finances. What we do have is Sturgeon
saying the SNP finances were fine when they were not. We are forced to conclude
that the SNP’s Treasurer was like the SNP’s Finance Minister (Kate Forbes) and
Health Minister (Humza Yousaf) just there for show. Sturgeon ran everything and
ran everything secretly.
If you were to do an experiment on Scottish devolution
from 1999 to 2024 you would have to conclude that it has failed. We ended up
not with devolved power but rather power concentrated in one person Nicola
Sturgeon who ruled with absolute power and in absolute secrecy. Everything on
the surface, the historical record, was merely for show, what really went on happened
behind the scenes.
It is an indictment not merely on Nicola Sturgeon it
is an indictment on the Labour Party that set up Scottish devolution and it is
up to the Labour Party to fix the mess that it created as no one else can.
There are different ways to do this, but above all get
rid of “national” parliaments unless you want to fuel nationalism. Make clear
that devolution is a form of regional government rather than a substitute for
independence. Don’t try to appease Scottish nationalism by giving it ever more
power and pretending it gets it parliament back from 1707. Appeasement has
given us this.
The two major figures since 1999 are Salmond and
Sturgeon each have faults. Salmond’s major fault may have been to be too
trusting and unable to see the duplicity inherent in Sturgeon. Our only
judgement on his behaviour in Bute House must be the jury’s. He was acquitted.
But I’m afraid we have to put Nicola Sturgeon in the category of betrayer.
There is a special innermost circle of hell where
Dante puts the great betrayers of history. There they are trapped in ice so far
away are they from God’s love that the sun cannot reach them. Right in the middle is the man who betrayed with a kiss.
But Sturgeon is not even a great figure of history.
She failed in everything she tried and what she tried was of small consequence
to history. Was it worth it?
What shall it profit a
man, if he shall gain Scottish independence, and lose his own soul?
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