Nicola Sturgeon turns the witness box into a soap box

Here is a piece I did for the Spectator on the former First Minister's first outing at the UK Covid inquiry

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-well-did-nicola-sturgeon-handle-the-pandemic/

Nicola Sturgeon handled the Covid pandemic rather well, presentationally at least. You might not expect me to say that after all that’s happened this year, but it’s true. The former First Minister was, is, a highly effective communicator who managed to persuade Scottish voters that she knew what she was doing even as she made all the same mistakes as Boris Johnson. 

In her daily pandemic press conferences in 2020/21, she always sounded well briefed and coherent unlike the UK Prime Minister who often bumbled his way through his script falling back on bad jokes. Sturgeon focussed relentlessly on a single message: that social democratic Scotland was dealing with the pandemic in a more humane way than the Brexit Tories. It was largely rubbish, but she sounded good.