COLIN CAMPBELL: Years after the adoring crowds, Nicola Sturgeon era is over
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When Nicola Sturgeon came to Inverness one sunny Saturday soon after becoming SNP leader the High Street was transformed into quite a spectacle.
The ecstatic welcome she received from a crowd crammed along its full length surpassed anything seen before or since. It made the arrival of royalty seem like a visit from the Russian ambassador.
I clambered up on a bench in Eastgate to get an overview of this political rockstar unable to move due to the adoring crowds around her. As she signed autographs and posed for photographs it was fully half-an-hour before her minders decided it was time to carve a way out for her.
Although the adulation for Nicola Sturgeon will have dipped in the past eight years, a significant number of the people there that day will have been personally upset by her resignation this week. Far more so than for the departure of any other politician in living memory. For those of us who are not upset, but who welcome it, this is no time for gloating.
She showed grit, character, and the deepest reserves of resilience for her staying power at the epicentre of the raging inferno of the independence debate in Scotland.
I’ve always looked askance at those who denigrate elite level politicians – whether it was the likes of Boris Johnson or now Nicola Sturgeon – in virulently personal terms. The reality is that with the enormous pressure they are under on a daily basis, and the intense level of modern day scrutiny they face, lesser mortals if exposed to it would crack up and be carried away on a stretcher after about half a day.
But Sturgeon did not do herself any favours in that respect. In one of many missteps Sturgeon foolishly said she “detests Tories”. And more than just dyed in the wool Tories for some time have detested her. However, in human terms, no-one, even with the thickest skin, can enjoy being disliked by a huge number of people in their own country. It must take its toll.
Latterly, the problem for her was that she had made too many blindingly obvious mistakes and misjudgements. They were piling up one after another. And they weren’t going away.
And top of the pile was her seeming obsession with gender reform. This hit home even to those who don’t closely follow politics, or barely dip into it at all. No one I know backs 16-year-olds being easily able to change their gender. And no one they know is aware of anyone who supports it either. And extremists at Holyrood, like Green MSP Maggie Chapman, who said in an almost unbelievable radio interview that eight-year-olds should be able to explore their gender, appalled and disgusted many people. And the fallout landed on Sturgeon.
Her Green acolytes, led by Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, did her no favours at all. She made that pair government ministers because she needed them to shore up support for independence.
In addition to their weird enthusiasm for demanding gender reform, they have been blamed for disrupting efforts to save lives by upgrading key roads and the A9 most of all.
Slater is also in charge of the proposed deposit return scheme, which will hike the cost of every can or bottle sold by 20p, and is seen as another upcoming shambles affecting consumers and traders alike.
And their fanatical hostility to the oil industry seemed utterly destructive at a time when fuel prices are soaring.
But the buck on all these issues stopped with Nicola Sturgeon. Within the SNP, her plan to turn the next General Election into a de-facto referendum on independence was highly contentious. And outside it, very many people considered it arrogant nonsense.
Nicola Sturgeon has dominated Scotland for the past nine years. Covid dramatically increased that dominance to the point where she was literally telling people specifically what they could and could not do in their daily lives. She was ever present in our lives.
For much of her time as First Minister she has been inescapable, which is why her sudden departure is of such significance.
Time takes its toll on all of us. And it’s taken a heavy toll on her. Her departure is nothing less than a monumental event for Scotland. And to a maelstrom of mixed feelings across the entire country, the Nicola Sturgeon era is finally over.
