Nicola in a spin that is turning her head
LIKE most Scots, and many grudgingly admiring English folk, I like Nicola Sturgeon. She has been the undoubted star of this General Election campaign, tip-tapping her spiked heels on to the national stage and forcing the rest of the UK to take Scotland seriously with her clear, nononsense rhetoric.
Unfortunately, there are few things more dangerous than a political leader on a popular high. They believe that they are invincible, Teflon-coated by the mighty power of their own reputation.
Sadly, this makes them do silly things. Like, for instance, hovering above the country in a giant luxury flying machine with an enormous picture of their own face splashed across the side.
On Thursday, Team Sturgeon unleashed the Sturbocopter (alternative monikers include Ayr Force One and the Nicolopter – it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still hideous) and promptly f l ew i nto a storm of hypocrisy.
For might it not be advisable, when your political message involves a lot of talk about austerity and standing up for cash-strapped families, not to deliver it from the luxury leather seats of a rumoured £2,500-an-hour helicopter? Just a thought.
But the Sturbocopter wasn’t the only blunder the First Minister made this week. She also caused a few hackles to rise with a bizarre video in which she seemed to suggest that the only choice for equality for women in Scotland was to vote SNP (it’s not), as if she had single-handedly invented feminism (she hasn’t).
Nicola is undoubtedly riding high right now. But the problem with popularity, particularly political popularity, is that it rarely lasts.
This doesn’t seem to have occurred to the powers that be within the SNP. Instead, life goes on in their little yellow bubble, where everyone merrily agrees with each other, all the livelong day, while paying absolutely no atten- tion to the pavement they are rapidly hurtling towards.
Dissenting voices against Nicola are non-existent. ‘I agree with Nicola,’ is the clarion call of every member of the party. When journalists doing their jobs have the audacity to ask her difficult questions, they are pilloried on social media.
The BBC’s poor Kaye Adams found herself the subject of abuse after grilling the First Minister on the radio this week. James Cook, BBC News’s Scotland correspondent, said recently he had received ‘vicious abuse’ for simply reporting the news.
None of this plays well with the swithering voter, particularly the man or woman who voted No, who voted Labour in the past, but is this Thursday considering voting SNP. Alex Salmond’s God complex was always a negative for the party outside of the flag-waving faithful. Nicola’s queen bee attitude may yet prove likewise.
There is plenty to admire about our First Minister. She is a smart and capable leader who has done, and will continue to do, great things for Scotland. But she is not above criticism, she is not above questioning – and, as we have seen this week, she is certainly not above hypocrisy.