HENRY DEEDES: Sturgeon’s swansong turned so vicious it made Rishi and Keir’s weekly ding-dongs look like a particularly genteel tea party
If she had been hoping to be whooped, cheered and garlanded with gladioli, she was in for a nasty shock. Instead, Nicola Sturgeon’s final session of First Minister’s Questions turned out to be a rather vicious affair.
Not quite haggis-in-yer-face, central Glasgow on the evening of an Old Firm derby sort of vicious – but pretty ill-tempered all the same.
It made Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer’s weekly ding-dongs resemble a particularly genteel tea party.
Ms Sturgeon arrived for her big goodbye dressed in Chelsea blue, presumably intended as a nod to her party’s colours rather than in tribute to Margaret Thatcher.
This was the Holyrood leg of her Farewell Tour. Outside they were probably selling T-shirts at 50 quid a pop with all the venues listed: Glasgow, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock. Plus new added dates in Dumbarton and Tobermory.
Nicola Sturgeon awaits the start of her last session of First Minister’s Questions before stepping down from the role
Ms Sturgeon seen breaking into tears in the main chamber of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh
For anyone who has not tuned in before, they do Parliamentary business rather differently north of the Tweed. Firstly, it is considerably less boisterous than in Westminster. Rather than cheer and shout ‘Hear, hear’, MSPs applaud one another.
Secondly, they sit at quasi-futuristic looking desks with microphones attached. It’s possible the building’s architects had in mind the set of that ropey old Henry Kelly quiz show Going For Gold.
Sturgeon’s chief tormentor for the day was Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader who also moonlights as an assistant football referee. A combined career, one must assume, which requires the hind of an ageing armadillo.
Turns out Mr Ross is a distinctly more combative figure than the squeaky sock puppet he tends to resemble in the Commons. He zoned in on the recent controversy over the SNP’s membership figures, which resulted in the party’s chief executive stepping down.
The chief exec, of course, being one Mr Nicola Sturgeon. Yes, Scottish politics is a rather wee world.
The row concerned a media report that SNP membership has fallen by around 30,000 since 2021, a claim Sturgeon and her team at first tried to rubbish. Despite several rebukes from the Speaker – sorry, ‘Presiding Officer’ – Ross repeatedly branded Sturgeon a ‘liar’. What’s more, she had treated the public as ‘idiots’, he yelled.
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As a viewer, you almost gasped at the forthright language. Down here in Westminster, such behaviour would almost certainly have earned Ross an early bath.
Whenever Ms Sturgeon faces flak, her mouth forms a tight little smirk. She narrowed her eyes, boasted of her party’s electoral triumphs, and belittled the Tories’ meagre representation in Scotland.
Nor, she added would she take lectures on honesty from the Conservatives with all the hoo-ha over Boris and Partygate this week. From the SNP faithful came a smattering of Maoist applause.
Tempers improved when Sturgeon was permitted to make a final statement, albeit only mildly.
Regrets? She’d had a few. None she was going to mention though. Och, heavens no! Instead, she set about reeling off a long list of what she considered were her great achievements in office.
It was an OK speech, though oddly devoid of sentiment. With Sturgeon you never see a chink in that politician’s facade. Most of her tributes concerned her SNP colleagues. As her party’s Queen Bee, time was when every member of her hive would have defended her to their very last sting. Not any more.
Mr Ross paid tribute to her longevity. Nicola Sturgeon had left her mark on Scottish politics ‘for better or worse’, he said. But he expressed regret at how her political talents had not been put to better use. Despite promising to govern for all of Scotland, too often, Ross claimed, she had used her vast influence to further her party’s political objectives. Yer, yer.
As for Labour’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, he too thought Sturgeon had squandered much of her time in office, though he did go on to describe her as a decent role model for Scottish women. He might as well have praised her for being kind to animals.
On Monday, Ms Sturgeon hands over the keys to Bute House – the First Minister’s grace-and-favour residence – to her successor. Those long-held hopes and dreams of independence will then become someone else’s project. Personally, I won’t miss her for one minute. But I suspect the Scots Nats might.
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