Nicola's Book

 I haven't read Nicola's book and have no intention of doing so. I have however assiduously followed the reviews and other coverage of it and that is what has prompted me to write down my own thoughts.

I am struck by one particular criticism Nicola's career prompted by her reflections on it. That is that she failed to use her nine years in office to advance the cause of independence. This does seem a correct conclusion but it begs the question of what exactly she could have done? On that her critics are noticeably silent. And it was  herself reaching that she couldn't disguise that any further that was the principle reason for her departure. She had played her final card by seeking to persuade the Supreme Court that Holyrood might be entitled to hold a unilateral referendum but she had failed. In the book she admits she expected to fail and the whole enterprise was, in truth, to show to her own troops that this was no way forward.

But what might have been the way forward? In truth there wasn't and isn't one. 

Sturgeon took up office in the immediate aftermath of the 2014 Referendum. Officially, her position then was that she accepted the result but, if she personally did, the troops she sought to lead did not. The All Under One Banner organisation, campaigning for a second vote, was set up as quickly as October 2014. This was an absurd objective but a lot of nationalists did not concede that. So Sturgeon had a problem. She held the line that a second attempt was not immediately possible only until June 2016, when she claimed the result of the Brexit Referendum justified another go at Scexit. Except she  had no way of achieving that second vote. She knew the power to order such an exercise lay at Westminster and she also knew that she had no prospect of obtaining the agreement of the UK Parliament or Government. 

Yet, twice a year, she would go to the SNP Conference and assure them a second vote was imminent. To rapturous applause. She was playing them for mugs. It was only when she herself realised that these declarations were increasingly lacking credibilty that she decided her only option was to flee the field. Hence the book.

But she had for a while at least kept independence at the forefront of Scottish discourse. Those opposed, myself included, thought it necessary to continue an argument we had already won. But we slowly realised that ourselves and with the focus on Scottish politics moving back to more conventional subjects, the more that focus realised how little else the SNP were achieving. The ferries without windows was perhaps the most perfect metaphor in that regard. 

So where are we now, Unsurprisingly neither Useless nor Swinney have come up with a strategy Nicola herself couldn't devise. Apparently the SNP will fight the elections next May on a platform that a majority of MSPs committed to Independence will justify inviting the UK Government to enter in to negotiations. But there has been such a majority at both the Holyrood elections since the referendum and nobody at Westminster has shown the slightest interest in "negotiations". That is not going to change. It's over. It has been over since 18th September 2014. Nicola's great achievement was not in advancing the cause but to disguise that there was no way of doing so for so long.