How Nicola Sturgeon Fooled—and Foiled—the Scottish Independence Campaign

The lachrymose leaving speech by Nicola Sturgeon, when she announced her resignation as leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), was revealing. The speech was about her, and the toll that leadership had taken on her, and not about the terrible toll that her administration’s policies have taken on the country it claimed to love. Her years in office have seen a continued decline in the Scottish economy and an increase in drug and alcohol related deaths, especially amongst women. In part, her government and that of the cabinet she assembled round her has had elements of pure comedy, or fantastic delusion. They rant about cuts to the British Army in Scotland while pursuing policies that would leave Scotland virtually undefended in the event of independence. Simultaneously, they would charge the Royal Air Force for the privilege of being in Scotland to defend it.

Nothing is sacred, and they even hold up that great Scottish icon Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster), a massive money spinner, as a symbol of English colonial oppression. Moreover, far from attaining independence, Scotland has become more dependent on Westminster, with an ever-increasing Barnett formula providing funding that exceeds all income generated by exports and tourism. But did Sturgeon ever intend to achieve independence? Does she care about Scotland, and what was her real agenda?

Sturgeon is not a Scottish nationalist but a Cultural Marxist, for which the tell-tale sign is an active contempt for traditional society, as expressed in the ‘three Fs’ of faith, flag, and family. In Sturgeon’s case there is ample evidence of her destructive intent. The campaign for Scottish independence has been a useful platform for her agenda, and she is adept at exploiting causes for electoral gain. As reported in her biography by Ian Mitchell, according to Iain Macwhirter (Herald journalist and scourge of the SNP), as a student activist Sturgeon espoused ‘women’s issues’ but once elected to the Scottish parliament never took up that cause again. Another glaring example of her duplicitous nature was her expressed desire to drop the ‘problematic’ word ‘nationalist’ from the name of her definitively nationalist party, saying that seeking independence should not be described as ‘nationalist.’

Her attack on faith and family is obvious, especially the latter. Self-identification of gender, a major plank in recent Scottish government policy, has been a double-edged sword. It has undermined family values based on the fundamental fact that males and females are biologically distinct, and that sex is immutable. It has also led to a fight with Westminster about the extent to which Holyrood can make laws of inextricable impact on the rest of the UK. Sturgeon’s priority was not the welfare of so-called transgender people; but she used this minority group to simultaneously drive a wedge between Scotland and England, and to demoralise the large number of conservative-minded Scots who obstruct her ‘progressive’ project. She tried to lay the groundwork with such virtue-signalling initiatives as the ‘tartan tampons’ whereby feminine sanitary products are available in the male toilets in all government buildings. The SNP were also behind the appointment of a man as ‘regional period dignity officer.’ This initiative was short-lived as they came in for international ridicule.

Transgenderism is a battering ram against traditional Christian teaching. But Christians who dare to speak out about this are vilified by government ministers, as was the case with the former Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland who saw the SNP’s transgender polices as tantamount to child abuse. Anybody issuing derogatory comments about transgenderism, even in their own homes, may be reported and prosecuted under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill.

Sturgeon’s demise will be attributed to her taking woke dogma too far for the Scottish populace, with her insistence that a male rapist who claimed to have changed gender should be moved to a female prison. But this was only the straw that broke the camel’s back. The SNP government failed in almost every area of public administration. More significantly, Sturgeon did not deliver the independence demanded by SNP supporters. Reacting to Sturgeon’s demise, writer and independence campaigner Craig Murray commented:

Sturgeon’s place in history will be as the woman who saved the Union in its hour of maximum danger—the moment the UK left the European Union, against the will of the large majority of Scottish people expressed in a referendum. Having saved the Union then, Sturgeon went on to obtain the Supreme Court ruling against a referendum, and subsequently shattered the Independence movement over identity politics.

In Murray’s intriguing view, Sturgeon was a useful idiot of Westminster, and was given an easy ride by the British media including the BBC:

But after the Supreme Court judgement, the UK Establishment did not need her any more. All that soft soap treatment disappeared. They started to seriously question her, on all points.

Whereas her predecessor, Alex Salmond, an astute political operator, was committed to independence, Sturgeon had globalist ambitions and a disparaging attitude towards ordinary Scottish people. She wanted to take her place in the progressive pantheon of world leaders alongside Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern. Ardern is gone, under similar circumstances having fallen from grace for overstepping the mark in New Zealand during the COVID-19 lockdown. The parallels between the two women and their failed careers is not lost on several commentators. Sturgeon’s ‘woke authoritarianism’ was her ultimate downfall. She walked into the transgender trap and found that she had fewer friends than she thought. It’s a classic case of pride before fall.