Nicola Sturgeon’s noisy bluster is designed to mask failure

Nicola Sturgeon’s increasingly infantile interventions are a monotonous distraction in Britain’s political discourse. The childish monomania of her drumbeat demands to revisit Scottish independence – a fundamental constitutional issue settled by referendum “for a generation” (as defined by the SNP) just six years ago – is diminishing Scotland’s standing in the world of grown-up politics.

Whatever the problem – living standards, healthcare, climate change, shortage of parking places, hair with split ends – Sturgeon has the answer: Scottish independence. Predictably, she has dragged out this tired panacea in response to the UK government’s Internal Market Bill. Her interview on Sky News addressing this topic demonstrated the extent to which she has lost the plot. The worst inconsistencies and contradictions were self-inflicted, issues she herself raised, illustrating the incoherence of her views.

“This Bill is an abomination on almost every level,” she declared, in her best John Knox slapping down Mary Queen of Scots pulpit style. It breaks international law, she insisted (hat tip Brandon Lewis, but without citing the legal precedents he invoked). It could force chlorinated chicken on Scotland, she claimed (is there a clause mandating the force-feeding of Scots?). It could impose Westminster’s spending priorities on Scotland, instead of Holyrood’s, devoting money to Boris’s bridge to Northern Ireland when the SNP wanted instead to spend money on schools and hospitals.

Schools are the institutions dearest to Nicola Sturgeon’s heart. She has made their success or failure the yardstick of her career as First Minister: “Let me be clear – I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people then what are you prepared to? It really matters.”

Well, that was pretty forthright for a politician: a straightforward demand to be judged on her performance in education. “It really matters.” So, how has that worked out for Nicola? In the OECD’s latest PISA international league tables of schools’ performance, Scotland came in 25th in science; on the day the SNP came to power it ranked 10th. In maths Scotland is now ranked 30th; it was rated 11th when the nationalists took office. Both results were a record low. Does Nicola Sturgeon still want to be judged on her educational achievements? Apparently not; she prefers to generate white noise about independence.

In her recent Sky News interview, Sturgeon indulged in increasingly wilder and more contradictory claims. Plugging away at the Internal Market legislation, she said: “This Bill would stop the Scottish parliament introducing the minimum pricing legislation which has been the flagship public health bill of recent years in Scotland.”

Has the First Minister, stalwart defender of international treaties, forgotten it was this flagship legislation on minimum pricing of alcohol that brought her administration into conflict with the European Court of Justice in 2015? But if that was an ill-chosen example, her Parthian shot to Sky viewers was one for the scrapbook: “The only way now to protect devolution is for Scotland to become independent.”

Quite. Just as the only way to end the ordeal of vertigo is to jump off a high building. To say that the utterances of the First Minister do not compute is to put it tactfully. The SNP has half-heartedly threatened legal action to derail the Internal Market Bill, while the House of Lords is similarly pledging to delay it. It’s déjà-vu all over again. The Scots, the Lords, the courts – oh, the nostalgia.

What is this – an Anna Soubry/Dominic Grieve tribute act? This pale imitation of last year’s parliamentary anarchy even hauled Dominic Grieve himself out of well-earned obscurity and onto the television screens for a grumble. In fact, it looks more like Marx’s definition of history repeating itself, first as tragedy then as farce.

Mike Russell, the Scottish government’s Constitution Secretary, made ambiguous noises about legal action against the Bill, but admitted he was “cautious about going to court”. That suggests he has read the draft text which specifically overrides “any other legislation, convention or rule of international or domestic law whatsoever, including any order, judgement or decision of the European Court or of any other court or tribunal”.

That watertight assertion of sovereignty reinstates a principle of English law dating back to the statutes of Praemunire and leaves no loopholes for the Scottish Court of Session or even the recently-created Supreme Court to usurp the role of government, or the power of Parliament. Britain’s elites have taken to fetishizing international law, since it is an instrument by which the supranational institutions favoured by the globalist establishment, may extend their supposed authority over nation states.

In reality, international law has a totally different character from national law. The laws of a nation state are fashioned and administered by a sovereign government. Since there is no international sovereign authority (to the regret of globalists), international law derives from no fount of sovereign power: it is simply a collective term for the treaties negotiated among sovereign states. For that reason, it is much more fluid than is often acknowledged.

A parliamentary question in the House of Lords on October 29, 2018 revealed that since 1945 many states, including the United Kingdom, have unilaterally departed from treaties 225 times. In reply to a further question on November 27, 2018 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office revealed that, since January 1 1988, Britain has unilaterally withdrawn from 52 multilateral treaties. These withdrawals took place while Britain was an EU member state. What sanctions ensued? Who even noticed? It did not make Britain a “rogue state”, in Ian Blackford’s inflated rhetoric.

So, re-jigging the badly flawed Withdrawal Agreement that Theresa May, supported by a rogue Remainer parliament, imposed on Britain will not have any adverse consequences beyond the retaliatory action Brussels may take, in which case it will cut off its nose to spite its face. Nicola Sturgeon’s outbursts reflect not only her desire to appear to have a place on the British political scene and to distract from her own failures in areas such as education and health, but also to divert attention from the build-up of pressure in the magma chamber of that most volatile of volcanoes, Mount Salmond.

Yesterday Sturgeon’s husband and SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, gave evidence to a Holyrood inquiry into the £500,000 cost to taxpayers of a judicial review finding in favour of Alex Salmond due to botched government proceedings relating to him, prior to his criminal trial. Murrell stated that he knew Salmond was visiting his wife, Nicola Sturgeon, at their house in Glasgow, but she “told me she couldn’t discuss the details”.

That would have been the correct protocol regarding government business. But on January 10 this year, Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish parliament: “Like other party leaders here, I have responsibilities as leader of my party and I took part in meetings in that capacity.”

So, Nicola Sturgeon’s meetings with Salmond in Glasgow on April 2, 2018, in Aberdeen on June 7, and again at her Glasgow home on July 24, as well as telephone conversations on April 23 and July 18, were about party business? In that case, why exclude her husband, the chief executive of the party?

However, it now appears it was government business since, despite telling parliament it could have any material the inquiry wanted, such material is being withheld by her government on grounds of “legal privilege”.

Meanwhile, the convener of the Holyrood inquiry, Linda Fabiani, in a letter to Murrell, questioned his claim that he was “unaware” of ministers using SNP communication channels for official business. Fabiani pointed out the Scottish government had admitted last year that the First Minister, four cabinet secretaries and one minister had sent government material from their personal accounts. Murrell denies that either he or the First Minister have violated any legal protocols.

For now, the leaders of the inquiry continue to search for evidence. Regarding the current investigation, the convener wrote that “the information we are seeking includes, but is not limited to, emails, minutes, notes, texts, papers and WhatsApp messages from all levels of the SNP. The Committee look forward to receiving your response as soon as is practicable.”

So do we all – with the possible exception of the First Minister. Her coat may be hanging on a rather shaky nail; making noise may eventually not be enough to get her off the hook.