Mad and Bad

Since his last post, Calton has decided that Nicola Sturgeon is both mad and bad. She has also appointed herself judge and jury over her own behaviour which is a bit worrying. Correction - very worrying. After the First Minister's astonishingly unwise outburst on Wednesday in which she questioned the outcome of Alex Salmond's criminal trial, Calton was not the only one who was concerned. Jim Sillars wrote to the Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans complaining that Sturgeon had breached the ministerial code. Instead of receiving a reply from Evans, he got a zinger from Nicola which you can read here, along with Sillars' measured response. Extremely measured, given the provocation of Nicola's rude reply to his first missive, but quite rightly holding to the fact that she has broken the ministerial code and should self-refer to James Hamilton (again) since no-one else seems to be able to refer her. No wonder people are starting to talk about Scotland being a failed state or a banana republic without the bananas.

We have a First Minister who is increasingly out of control, using a Covid briefing to attack an opponent, making ill-judged comments about our judicial system and then firing off a reply to a letter that wasn't even addressed to her. She has issued dire warnings to any of her supporters caught reading Wings Over Scotland, presumably to stop them reading articles like this. She accuses her opponents of a scorched earth policy when that is precisely what she is doing to the SNP. Lastly, and most egregiously, she has accused Alex Salmond of not backing up his claims with evidence when she knows full well that he is prevented from doing so for legal reasons. That's not just mad - that's bad, in Calton's opinion.

Scottish National Pyromaniac

Calton is not sure whether the almost light-hearted bravado of Nicola Sturgeon's performance on today's briefing indicates total confidence that she is untouchable or the start of a descent into madness. Or both. It certainly made the case for the BBC pulling the daily Nicola show all the more imperative. She used it today to attack Alex Salmond in a way which, to Calton's non-legally trained mind, might be actionable when she stated that "Alex Salmond is innocent of criminality, that doesn’t mean the behaviour they claimed of didn’t happen." ('They' being the alphabet women.) For the First Minister to stray into such dangerous territory, and for her to even answer questions on the Alex Salmond affair in the Covid briefing, was very unwise.

Another worrying indication of Nicola Sturgeon's increasing isolation and failure to grasp reality is the account of the SNP NEC meeting at the weekend which Sturgeon attended via zoom. According to Iain Lawson, she spent a lot of time on dire threats for anyone caught sharing Wings Over Scotland and pushed through a definition of transphobia which will exclude women like Joanna Cherry and Joan McAlpine from the party. Neither of those actions will help heal the divisions in her party - quite the opposite. The SNP leader is behaving like a pyromaniac in a straw-filled barn. Needless to say, her diktat re Wings has been pointedly ignored by Chris McEleny and Angus McNeil who have both posted articles on Wings since the NEC meeting.

Sturgeon is keen to stick to May 6th for the election so it seems absolutely crazy for her to be purging her party with less than 3 months to go. The SNP is haemorrhaging members, there's no money in the bank and Salmond's accusations are now making front page news. Even the London-based MSM has finally realised there's a problem in Scotland. She's presumably hoping that she can capitalise on the false impression that she's handling Covid well (or at least not as badly as Boris) with an early election, however the backlash to her route out of lockdown rather gives the lie to that idea.

If Nicola Sturgeon wasn't in charge of the country at such a crucial time it wouldn't matter that she appears to be losing the plot and is spending more time dealing with Alex Salmond than Covid. Unfortunately it does matter and it also matters that there doesn't seem to be anyone within the SNP with the experience and gravitas to have a word in her shell, as happened with Margaret Thatcher. So it looks like we will have the unedifying spectacle of a desperately damaged First Minister clinging on to power unless or until she is voted out. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

Birds of a Feather

The last few days have seen a tectonic shift in Scottish politics which has resulted in an interesting realignment. Instead of the SNP and the Greens on one side, with a supporting cast which included Wings over Scotland, versus all those who wanted to stay in the UK on the other side,  we now have the SNP split down the middle with one half teaming up with Wings, who now has a number of pro-UK people sharing his articles, and the other half desperately trying to distance themselves from Wings and support their beleaguered leader Nicola Sturgeon. And if you are still managing to follow Calton here, well done! It's not been easy to keep up with the shifting allegiances lately. Indeed some poor SNP supporters just don't know who is the goodie and who is the baddie now.

It may seem very complicated but, at heart, it's very simple. Birds of a feather flock together and so, on one side, we have those for whom truth transcends, and on the other, those for whom independence transcends. That's why unionists like Calton have been tweeting posts from pro-independence blogger Stuart Campbell recently. That's why "wheesht for indy" has become a thing. That's why SNP members are finally breaking ranks and speaking out, in spite of the infamous SNP gagging rule. The trigger has been the inquiry into the handling of complaints against Alex Salmond but the rumblings have been going on beneath the surface for some time now. Calton expects a full-scale eruption next week when Salmond finally testifies to the parliamentary inquiry.

Decent Human Beings Need Not Apply

Just in case there are still people out there who think that, by voting SNP, they will not only get independence but a decent human being for their MSP, Calton would like to draw your attention to what's been going on within the SNP with regards to disability and candidate selection. Rev Stuart Campbell has covered it in great detail here and here, however for those who haven't been following the story, here it is in brief:

The SNP have decided to give the top spot on the list for the Holyrood election second ballot to disabled people in four out of the eight regions. Given that the party gained a large number of constituency seats at the last election, having the top list spot is hugely important because lots of constituency seats reduces the number of list seats which a party can have. (Just look at Mid Scotland and Fife region which currently has no SNP list MSP because they have got so many of the constituencies, whereas the Tories have four list MSPs in the region.) There is therefore going to be an almighty scramble amongst SNP wannabee MSPs to get top spot on the list. Any list. Even if they don't live in the region.

So here's where the disability thing comes in because, the SNP NEC in their wisdom have decided that no proof of disability is required, although they have apparently tried to define what constitutes a disability, and when the leader of the Independence for Scotland Party, who is blind, questioned the self-identifying of disability she was subjected to a tirade of abuse from SNP members. It's a shame that being a nice, kind human being isn't the requisite qualification for top spot in the SNP, although if it was, they might struggle to get any candidates at all. As it is, with only four top spots reserved for the disabled, and the other four reserved for BAME people, it's only a matter of time before someone with the colouring of Ross Greer self-identifies as black.

The Words Matter Even More

Nicola Sturgeon continues to use the phrase "I do not consider that I have misled Parliament" (or "broken the ministerial code"), a fact which Calton has already highlighted. At first hearing it seems a strange turn of words to use but, on further consideration it becomes apparent that, by using this particular phrase, the beleaguered First Minister is leaving the door open to someone else considering that she HAS misled Parliament, the most obvious person to do so being James Hamilton, who is currently looking into the matter and who will hopefully report by the end of the month. Having paved the way by her choice of words, and her refusal to say whether or not she would resign if she was found to have broken the code, she can then employ the tactic of 'my truth vs your truth' - 'I consider that I have not broken the code, you consider that I have'. Who is to say who is right in this post-truth, through-the-looking-glass world which is Scotland 2021?

Sturgeon will get an easy ride from the Parliamentary Committee investigating the botched handling of the Salmond case when she appears in front of it next week, thanks to her fan-girl Fabiani. If necessary the whole avian and animal kingdom will be summoned to aid in deflecting questions from Murdo Fraser, Alex Cole-Hamilton and Jackie Baillie. Possibly even flora too - 'Oh look - a snowdrop' - if things really start looking difficult. The coup-de-grace will be the post-truth argument. Nicola is right because she is right. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. Even in the face of utterly damning evidence she will not resign. This is where we have got to and it stinks.

Those who voted for this woman and who continue to support her should hang their heads in shame. Truth matters far more than independence or party loyalty.

A Waste of Time

Today's party political broadcast daily briefing by Nicola Sturgeon was a complete waste of time. All she did was tell us that she is going to tell us the stuff we really want to know in the Scottish Parliament tomorrow afternoon. The only real substance to her presentation was the daily figures on cases, deaths and vaccinations which are repeated anyway by broadcasters, sometimes even before the briefing is over. Since today is Monday, the one figure Calton suspects we pay most attention to, the number of deaths, is inaccurate. Given all this, what was the point? OK it gets Sturgeon's wee face on the telly once more but it also gives the lie to her saying that she is 100% focused on defeating Covid. There is no way that she can be even 50% focused on that when she spends so much time preparing for each briefing, preparing suitable answers for the questions she is likely to be asked after it, travelling from Glasgow to Edinburgh, giving the briefing, being unpleasant to any journalist who dares ask an awkward question, even although she's prepared for just that eventuality, and then travelling back to Glasgow. Even a very perfunctory cost-benefit analysis would show that this just isn't either efficient or good value for money.

We don't need a briefing every day. The daily numbers can be given out in a press release. We only need to hear from the First Minister when something significant changes. That way, she really can give her full attention to improving Scotland's vaccine rollout so that it catches up with England, instead of just talking about it.