Blaming the media is a sign the SNP is in deep trouble

“That is of course why they are being opposed tooth and nail in what has been a Unionist-inspired media-feeding frenzy, targeted at Nicola Sturgeon, with the aim of decapitating the party, demonising its leadership, derailing our discussion and delegitimising what we seek to achieve,” he wrote.

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When words like frenzy, decapitating, demonising and delegitimising are all fitted into such a tight space, it’s often a sign that the author is beginning to fray around the edges. Yet, losing the plot and wrecking the house are not behaviours normally associated with Mr Russell, a seasoned campaigner known to be circumspect and moderate in his dealings with friend and foe alike.

Until a few weeks ago, the SNP and Ms Sturgeon had enjoyed, by any reasonable analysis, a relatively harmonious relationship with the Scottish and UK press. Indeed, it wasn’t very long ago that Scotland’s First Minister was being greeted with almost universal acclaim by newspapers and magazines representing all points of the political spectrum.

You never had to wait long between fawning and unctuous puff pieces masquerading as interviews or profiles penned by a select cohort of journalists who’d been mesmerised by their proximity to raw power. There was even a photo-shoot with Ms Sturgeon looking a million dollars in a bonny skirt and sweater combo for Vogue magazine.

Much of this, of course, can be attributed to her judicious and empathetic leadership during the Covid crisis. In that first, terrifying year of lockdown her daily media briefings were like lifelines for those groups who felt most vulnerable to the predations of Covid-19. They were everything that Boris Johnson’s Downing Street briefings were not: detailed, honest and authoritative.

It’s why Fraser Nelson, editor of the most Unionist and Conservative-facing organ of them all, The Spectator, last month described her as “one of the most successful politicians not just in Britain but in Europe. What she’s managed to achieve politically is remarkable,” Mr Nelson observed.

Gradually though, the threat of Covid began to recede and, inevitably, the more routine affairs of government became pertinent once more: bridging the attainment gap in our schools; managing the runaway juggernaut that’s the NHS and devising a strategy for curbing Scotland’s devastating addiction death toll. On all of these issues it can be argued that criticism of Ms Sturgeon’s administration was entirely reasonable and justified. Nevertheless, another election was won and polling for the next one indicated a similar outcome.

Scotland’s First Minister, you see, possesses an advantage denied to all other ruling parties and political leaders across Europe and the UK: the continuously febrile issue of Scottish independence. By deploying this formidable political weapon she has easily seen off all opposition in Scotland. She’s been assisted in this by the absurdly weak efforts of the Scottish Tories and the Labour Party in Scotland.

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When such a democratic deficit exists in the political realm it’s the duty of the media to attempt to bridge it by analysing the governing party’s failures. And as it became depressingly obvious that the SNP was playing the wider Yes movement for fools with its half-hearted commitment to self-determination, even independence-supporting commentators began to examine what was really happening within the party. It’s not a pretty sight.

This is a party where bullying and intimidation has become the norm; most of it targeted at any members who dare to question the leadership’s route of travel towards independence. Mr Russell insists that he welcomes all ideas about how best to achieve this, yet he chose to remain silent when individuals like Chris McEleny, Angus MacNeil and others were marginalised and abused for proposing what the First Minister has recently embraced: making the next election a de facto independence plebiscite.

Mr Russell also knows what’s changed in recent weeks to have loosened Nicola Sturgeon’s grip on power. Her absurdly unwise strategy of ignoring all concerns about the self-ID part of the GRR Bill has begun to unravel. The opponents of this tried to warn her that when the regressive whims of an insidious cartel of activists met the reality of public opinion she’d be in deep, deep trouble.

But, having chosen to surround herself with a praetorian guard of science-dodging, misogynistic extremists she had convinced herself that the public would be cowed into acquiescent silence. This delusion was reinforced by having the nastier evangelists of this credo hunt down any refuseniks on social media and accuse them of being transphobic bigots.

Soon, though, the Scottish public were alive to what was being proposed after it was revealed that the Scottish Government wanted to place a double rapist among very vulnerable women at Cornton Vale prison. Nor did they take kindly to being patronised by a political elite who had lately taken to describing them as ignorant, primitive transphobes.

The “unionist-inspired media feeding frenzy” of Mike Russell’s vivid imagination is, of course, nothing of the sort. The damage to Ms Sturgeon and the entire Yes movement has all been self-inflicted by the leadership of the SNP. For present and future students of politics it’s a lesson on what happens when a political elite become so drunk on power that they believe they can defame the people who elected them.

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The media are simply reacting to what their readers and viewers are telling them: that they’re not stupid, they’re not transphobes and they know when they’re being taken for a ride. Those Scottish trade union leaders who have also been captured by the lie that sex isn’t binary should also think carefully about this.

Decapitating, demonising, derailing and delegitimising is what has been going on within the SNP for several years now, and the worst of it has targeted women inside the party. In due course, some of them may even feel secure enough to reveal publicly the orchestrated campaign of threat directed at them on the SNP’s ruling National Executive Committee and to name and shame the worst perpetrators of it.

Mike Russell knows all about this. By his silence, he is complicit in it. He should be reflecting on this rather than launching infantile attacks on the media.