Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has led a charmed life. Even her sternest critics agree that she is immensely talented, one of the UK’s most successful politicians, a master of detail and an effective communicator. She has been at the pinnacle of public life for two decades. But all things must pass. Nearly ten years after she took over as leader from Alex Salmond just about everything is going wrong at once.
Hospital waiting lists lengthen, teacher strikes roll on, council service cuts deepen, the ambitious plan for a Social Care Service has stalled. Across the board the SNP government appears to have made a right royal mess of just about every policy for which it has responsibility. The First Minister has managed to remain above the chaos, as if it is all someone else's fault – usually the Westminster Tories.
She cannot, however, blame Westminster for the highest homeless numbers on record. The educational attainment gap, on which she said she wanted her leadership to be judged, is actually growing. The ferry contracts fiasco is a direct result of her botched nationalisation of Ferguson Marine. She turned her back on North Sea oil and gas just at the moment energy prices sky-rocketed leaving many Scottish families unable to heat their homes. Yet even her own much-vaunted climate change targets are being missed, only a year after the First Minister promenaded at COP26.
Even the independence project is going south. The First Minister's attempts to bounce the UK into an early referendum was given humiliatingly short shrift by the Supreme Court, last year. Her plan to turn the next general election into a “defacto” referendum on independence has been denounced by constitutional experts and caused a split in the Yes movement.
Yet the First Minister's personal popularity has remained high. Nicola has been walking on water, across a sea of trouble. Until now.
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