A FRIEND recently offered me this interesting insight: “If you want to know what Nicola Sturgeon is going to do next, look at what Jacinda Ardern is doing now”.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Could it be that Scotland’s Great Leader is in fact New Zealand’s Great Follower? An imitation, not the real thing. It brought to mind the popular nineties and noughties TV talent show Stars in their Eyes, in which contestants impersonate a showbiz star. “Who are you going to be tonight, Nicola?” “Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be progressive global icon, Jacinda Ardern”.
It’s easy to see why Nicola might want to imitate Jacinda. Jacinda Ardern is cool, whereas Nicola (“I assume a certain ability to attach context and common sense to what I am saying”) Sturgeon is increasingly losing her cool. Jacinda’s also everything Nicola aspires to be. Covid eliminator. Planet saviour. Women's rights champion.
How frustrating then for a First Minister hoping to add lustre to her brand to instead find herself beset on every side by doubts. Covid cases uncomfortably high. Her claim to climate leadership called into question by an inconvenient truth from Greta Thunberg. Entangled in a highly charged argument over the meaning of womanhood.
Even her deal with the Greens, pledging a new style of politics, is a straight lift from Jacinda. You don’t need Fiona Bruce’s art expert, however, to see that Nicola’s copy is a fake, not the real thing.
Pushing a party even more snugly into a pocket it’s already in, to help press for another independence referendum most Scots don’t want, hardly ushers in a new spirit of consensus-building to unite a deeply divided country.
The hallmark of Jacinda Ardern’s leadership is the promise of a kinder, gentler style of politics. Surfing the zeitgeist of a world weary of constant battling against terrorist attacks, financial crashes, pandemic infections and, yes, constitutional bickering as well.
Kindness and gentleness are not values one immediately associates with the SNP’s brand of politics.
Exhibit 1 M’lud: Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader at Westminster. Mr Blackford is famous for public spiritedly keeping himself permanently at a state of Defcon 1 preparedness, ready to explode in synthetic rage at a moments notice.
Exhibit 2: For Scots appalled by Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon’s economic adviser Professor Blyth, warns that Scexit would be Brexit on steroids – “it (the Union) has been together for over 300 years. So if pulling apart 30 years of economic integration is going to hurt, 300 years is going to hurt a lot”.
Exhibit 3: The SNP’s former Deputy Leader, Jim Sillars, has questioned its strategy of being constantly at loggerheads with the UK Government. He identified “the grudge and grievance tactic of the SNP leadership” as playing to and keeping alive an undertone of anti-Englishness in Scotland.
Progressive it is not.
Reality is dawning inside the SNP that Brand Sturgeon looks tired and out of touch with latest trends. No longer the cutting edge of fashion. All so yesterday. Hence, like all failing brands, the feverish attempts to refresh. But rebranding can’t achieve a turn-around when the problem’s product quality.
You only have to look at the big new economic idea in what passes in the SNP for creative, blue skies thinking. Characteristically impeccable branding: An Intergenerational Renewal Fund. But the same old product. More powers. Greater borrowing. All wrapped in sophisticated-sounding City-speak of long-dated bond issuance. An apparently pain-free solution, swerving a difficult tax and spending dilemma.
If the SNP is serious about separation and borrowing the pound outside the UK’s fiscal and monetary union, forget about running even higher structural deficits. Financial markets would demand a future Scottish Treasury maintains surpluses to match its foreign currency obligations. The painful fiscal adjustments of independence foreshadowed in the SNP’s Growth Commission Report would seem like a walk in the park by comparison.
Or does this idea’s author not expect separation any time soon? Is the calculation that, as part of the UK, the risk of Scotland taking on these new long-term debt obligations is manageable? Because the markets would judge the UK Government – and the Bank of England as lender of last resort – would have to step in at the first sign of trouble. The very essence of moral hazard.
The SNP’s penchant for pretending difficult decisions don’t exist, made it fascinating to watch the SNP Government’s pavlovian response to Boris Johnson’s Health and Social Care Levy. Outrage. Blackford deployed. Yet another angry letter winging its way to SW1. Victim status assumed.
Don’t get me wrong. For those concerned about the proposals, there are plenty of charges to level at the Prime Minister. But picking on Scotland isn’t one of them. Indeed his approach to NHS and economic recovery is explicitly “we’re all in this together”. Maybe Scottish ministers are discombobulated by an Old Etonian outflanking them on the left. Or possibly community spirit stops at Gretna Green.
To govern is to choose. Mr Johnson’s made his choice. David Cameron’s delivery to Scotland of unprecedented new tax and welfare powers in 2016, means the SNP Government must now choose. To tell Scotland how it intends to use the £1.1 billion annual windfall from the new levy. What tax rates? Which spending priorities?
The SNP’s exclusive, identity-based nationalism would have us believe voting for independence is the only patriotic Scottish thing to do. Now the SNP wants to convince Scots it’s the progressive choice as well.
Many Scots will be repelled by having their strong, multi-layered, sense of Scottish identity and patriotism hijacked in this way. They will also increasingly question just how progressive is a party seeking to divide and inflict upon them policies, which will ‘hurt a lot’.
Nicola Sturgeon once graced the pages of Vogue. But she’s not in vogue now. First Minister, you’re no Jacinda Ardern.
Andrew Dunlop was an adviser to former Conservative prime minister David Cameron during the 2014 independence referendum
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