Monday 29 January 2024
Nicola Sturgeon’s nodding dogs
Time moves on, headline clamour moves on but Henry Hill has a useful Critic reminder of what he calls 'Nicola Sturgeon’s nodding dogs'.
Don’t forget Nicola Sturgeon’s nodding dogs
The SNP have been enabled by uncritical British media
The cult of Nicola Sturgeon, now unravelling before our eyes in such a spectacular fashion, took a lot of building and had a lot of builders. The Scottish media played a substantial role; at one point, the then First Minister appeared on the cover of Holyrood magazine, decked out with wings and a halo, above the headline “Can she do no wrong?”
But even so, Scottish journalists generally did a much better job of trying to hold her to account than their colleagues south of the border. (Perhaps living in SNP-run Scotland had something to do with it.)
It is well worth reading the whole piece, even though the territory is familiar enough to many. It highlights the damage caused by mainstream media when they choose play down the full extent of even the most obvious and egregious failures.
Sturgeon seemed to offer an attractive contrast with Boris Johnson. Whereas England was in the throes of Tory chaos, Scotland was blessed with sober, sensible, grown-up and progressive government. It was for a while not uncommon to see English people saying they wished they could vote SNP.
But although it wasn’t yet afflicting the Nationalists’ poll ratings the way it is now, the signs were already there about the real condition of Nationalist Scotland. The secretive, imperial style of government. The pressure on third-sector institutions to conform. Woeful school and health performance. The self-inflicted ferry fiasco. The sustained effort to undermine the autonomy of local government.
Yet with some honourable exceptions (I myself was memorably described merely as “outwardly respectable” by one Scottish commentator), the London press didn’t cover such stories often or in depth. Nor did they much scrutinise the similar tale unfolding in Labour-run Wales, save when the Conservatives made intermittent efforts to highlight it during elections.
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6 comments:
Yes, the media oversight is important, but the most telling point here is that the UK's money is still going north of the border. You wouldn't know this if you were to listen to the Nats. A foreigner with no background knowledge might well think that Scotland was newly independent.
I think that indications that St. Nicola was not all that popular in Scotland occurred about the time she acquired the "Wee Jimmy" name.
She was fortunate in that the Labour and Unionist parties were shite - a technical term.
The Liberals never recovered from the way that they ditched Charles Kennedy.
Nicola usurped and then ambushed Alex Salmond. Not nice
If she had stuck with a purely Independent Scotland agenda she might have got away with it.
But no. She had to alienate big chunks of the electorate.
Exaggeratedly pro EU, anti heavy industry, very pro wind turbines, very anti English, ignored Scotland extremities.
She treated her deputy John Swinney with contempt. He may have deserved it.
Walked two places behind her. Any bad news to be announced , he dolefully dished it. Nicola was the issuer of good news.
Still we are lucky. We have four major parties to score off our voting ballots. You English only have three.
Sam - and might well think Net Zero has been achieved on top of independence.
Doonhamer - from this side of the border it always seemed odd that Nicola managed to usurp Alex Salmond who came across as a far more capable politician. Yet I don't think there is much ballot paper appeal on either side of the border and that's the real problem, lack of choice.
"The SNP have been enabled by uncritical British media"
Maybe so. But Yorkshire has a larger population than Scotland so you could argue that the SNP benefitted from a disproportionately large uncritical British media response. I guess in the end the media was seduced by too many 'easy' column inches and pixels.
One wonders why the media are quite so incurious as they are. Have too many of them been culled for economic reasons; have they just grown lazy or do they have an unconscious mind set that precludes certain types of inquiry?
DJ - yes that's a good point, there is a disproportionately large uncritical British media response. As you say, seduced by too many 'easy' column inches and pixels.
Tammly - I think they have just grown lazy, where lazy is also cheaper because investigation and analysis are minimised.
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