ANDREW PIERCE: The curious case of a strangely silent Nicola Sturgeon after her tearful press conference
When Theresa May quit as Prime Minister back in 2019 there was a swift and predictable response from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
After paying tribute to May’s service to the country, she twisted the knife saying: ‘Given current circumstances, it also feels deeply wrong for another Tory to be installed in No 10 without a General Election.’
When May’s successor fell last summer, Sturgeon’s ‘tribute’ described Boris Johnson as a ‘disgrace to the office’, but still she couldn’t resist rattling the tin for another election: ‘One Prime Minister that we did not vote for replaced by yet another Prime Minister that we did not vote for and would not vote for given the chance.
‘For Scotland, the Westminster system doesn’t represent our best interests and that is why we don’t just need a change of Prime Minister . . . Scotland needs a permanent alternative to Westminster.’
By the time Liz Truss quit after 49 days in office, Sturgeon had got into her stride. ‘The interests of the Tory Party should concern no one right now. A General Election is now a democratic imperative.’
When Theresa May quit as Prime Minister back in 2019 there was a swift and predictable response from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (pictured)
So what about a new Scottish Parliament election, now that the First Minister will be packing her bags next month, two years into the SNP’s fourth term? Not a word about it in Sturgeon’s tearful press conference last week.
Talking of resignation statements, David Cameron’s lasted seven minutes; Theresa May’s six minutes 50 seconds; Boris’s six minutes; Liz Truss three. And Sturgeon? A yawn-stifling 18 minutes. Self-indulgent as well as hypocritical.
Political quote of the week from impressionist Rory Bremner. ‘Got a call from BBC Radio 4 asking if I’d heard the news and how would I remember her. I said she was strong, principled, feisty, a female icon and looked amazing in the fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. Pause. “So nothing about Scottish independence then?” ’
What’s more hypocritical than a Lefty egalitarian who accepts a knighthood?
Answer: a Lefty egalitarian who accepts a knighthood but then asks Hansard, the parliamentary official record, not to call him ‘Sir’ in its reports.
While Hansard happily refers to other ‘Sirs’ in the Commons, the leaders of both the Labour and Lib Dem parties, Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey respectively, are simply ‘Misters’.
If honorifics are too posh for class-conscious politicians, they should not have accepted them.
Ed Davey’s deafening silence on Europe has become so loud it threatens to drown out the Lib Dem spring conference next month. The party’s Liberator magazine reports mutterings of discontent, not least since pro-Remain Tories are the most likely switchers to the Lib Dems. Be in no doubt that, while Davey is scared of opening old wounds on Brexit, his MPs want us back in the EU.
Labour frontbenchers were all over the airwaves last week banging on about government spending on credit cards that were introduced by, er, the last Labour government.
But nothing from Keir Starmer. Is that because the Spectator has dusted off records which showed that, in two years as Director of Public Prosecutions, he ran up a £160,000 bill for a car and driver for his 3.9-mile commute to his office in the City?
But nothing from Keir Starmer. Is that because the Spectator has dusted off records which showed that, in two years as Director of Public Prosecutions, he ran up a £160,000 bill for a car and driver for his 3.9-mile commute to his office in the City?
Between 2010 and 2013 he stopped using the car and no other DPP has had an official car ever since. So why did he need to spend so much public money in the months before?
The Welsh government, which last week I reported had put tampons in the men’s loos in the Senedd building, has come up with another cracker. In its wisdom, the Labour-run government is mulling a ban on multi-buy offers in supermarkets as part of its latest anti-obesity drive. Clearly, the cost-of-living crisis that Labour keeps speaking of in England doesn’t apply in the principality.
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