Sturgeon’s failings, not the Supreme Court, will finish her

The First Minister’s career will end in failure due to her own shortcomings, not the Supreme Court

Too many newspaper columnists have said – and I am as culpable as any – that although we disagree with her policies and deplore their baleful effect on Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon is a formidable politician. Noting the prime ministers since she took over following the SNP’s referendum defeat in 2014, it is easy to see why. David Cameron abandoned ship after losing the Brexit referendum rather than hanging around to clear up his mess. Theresa May could not take a decision. And historians will argue for centuries about whether Boris Johnson or Liz Truss was the worst incumbent of No10 in history. Ms Sturgeon shows that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is Queen.

For all the spin about her genius, she has a pitiful record. Scotland leads Europe in rates of drug addiction and consequent deaths, fatalities more than tripling since the SNP came to power in 2007 and currently five times higher per capita than in England and Wales. Its health service’s performance – in GP capacity, A&E waiting times, diagnoses of early-stage cancer, efficiency of its ambulance service and availability of nurses and midwives – makes England’s appear a paragon of efficiency, so much so that Ms Sturgeon’s Bolshevik administration floats the idea of making the rich (whoever they might be) pay for health care.

Standards in its schools (two-thirds of which have not been inspected for five years) are so execrable that the SNP has withdrawn Scotland from international league tables – a particular tragedy for a nation once renowned for taking education more seriously than anywhere else in Britain: there was a good reason why enlightenment arrived here through Scotland and not through philistine England. Today school absences are endemic.

The SNP refuses to build nuclear power stations and to develop a new oil field, despite energy shortages. Violent crime has rocketed. Vital ferry services to its islands are chaotic. An Orwellian approach to liberty includes making remarks one might make in one’s own home potential “hate crimes”. It has jumped on the bandwagon of transgender extremists so recklessly that even some of its MSPs have rebelled. No wonder Ms Sturgeon seeks a diversion from all these failures by demanding another referendum on separatism.

However, the challenge in the Supreme Court of the right of the United Kingdom Parliament to deny that referendum was doomed to fail. Her rhetoric suggests she inhabits a parallel universe of paranoia about Scotland’s place in the world. The Court dismissed her description of the country as an “oppressed colony” – making it sound like Jamaica in the 1860s – as an “absurd claim”. In reality, most Scots enjoy a decent standard of living in a mature democracy, while SNP’s system of institutional bribery (otherwise known as its welfare state) props up an idle minority, and the growing number incapable of work because of self-destruction by narcotics. Ms Sturgeon asserted that Scotland was like Kosovo: the Supreme Court, being rational, told her to chuck it.

Like Donald Trump – widely considered delusional if not mad – Ms Sturgeon cannot accept defeat. Laughed out of court, she says the next general election will be a “de facto” referendum – in other words, if a majority of the Scottish popular vote supports her increasingly ragbag-like party, she will claim it proves that the Union continues against the will of Scotland’s people. That is a dangerous tactic. She looks finished now, not just after the Supreme Court but because of her desperate record, and growing support for the Labour party in Scotland. Labour polled 18.6 per cent at the 2019 general election: it now polls 31 per cent, according to the latest YouGov poll. This implies not only that the SNP will not get the 50 plus per cent she expects, but that Labour may win a dozen or more seats in Scotland. Unless the Tories find a miracle cure for their present unpopularity, that would help them to form a United Kingdom minority government, with a confidence and supply arrangement with the Liberal Democrats.

Sir Keir Starmer said at his party conference in September that he would do no deal with the SNP. Any such deal would require a referendum, which in the increasingly unlikely event of separatism prevailing, would deny Labour access to the Scottish seats it would probably need if it were to govern in a majority again. Also, Sir Keir is aware that if he becomes prime minister he would not wish to go down in history as the man who wrecked the Union. The way Scotland is going, it won’t come to that.

Ms Sturgeon is living on borrowed time. Her base is shrinking to the bunch of republican fanatics literally or metaphorically on Red Clydeside. More and more Scots note the wreckage of their public services,

The Court dismissed her description of the country as an ‘oppressed colony’

and put their restoration above the pipe dreams of an “independence” that would lead to decades of relative poverty, and make living standards even worse. Her associates increasingly say she knows the game is up, and covets some job in Brussels: though if the EU thinks she can be of use it is in an even worse state than many of us believe. The Supreme Court did not sign her political death warrant: she has done that herself through her repeated failures to keep her promises to a betrayed Scottish electorate. Her habit has always been to blame everyone – usually the English and their institutions – except herself for her disasters. The Supreme Court has exposed her inadequacies and dishonesty: all that remains to be seen now is whether she jumps off the bridge before her imploding party pushes her.