Failing the test of leadership, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is angry over Theresa May talks snub, untrustworthy SNP leader isn’t a team player, unable or unwilling to adapt to the new political post Brexit landscape, who wants a cold and unattractive malcontent like Sturgeon in their midst?

Dear All

‘A rat is a rat for all that’, my adaptation of a line in a Robert Burns poem, and if anyone is a rat then unpopular SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon fits that description beautifully. Just recently, the SNP in the guise of failed ex Education Minister Mike Russell was threatening to publish a report on report on Brexit.

This is despite being told it wasn’t in the UK national interest.

Most people will find it incredible if the Prime Minister Theresa May was to take someone as untrustworthy and unprofessional as Nicola Sturgeon into her confidence. Nicola Sturgeon is seen by many as a ‘grass’, in case you don’t get the lingo, a ‘grass’ is someone who spills secrets usually to the harm of anyone individual or organisation.

The SNP leader is said to be angry and frustrated with Theresa May because she thinks that that the UK is freezing-out of Edinburgh in the UK Government’s decision on what “end state” relationship the country should have with the EU post-Brexit.

They are!

If Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP wanted trust and confidences, then, they should have accepted Brexit, they should have accepted the democratic right of the people and they should have accepted that there is a new post Brexit landscape; Nicola Sturgeon didn’t accept any of it.

You can’t be a team player if you are undermining the team and willing to pass secrets to the opposition while publicly supporting them. There are two crunch meeting with the Prime Minister’s “war Cabinet”. The purpose of which is to decide what they want to see as a transition period and in the future relationship with the EU27.

Back in 2016, I suggested on the Gordon Brewer BBC radio show that the devolved administrations should have a role in Brexit, sadly having seen how the SNP and others have acted this doesn’t seem possible.

There is no goodwill, no working together and no compromise because from the outset Nicola Sturgeon et al have been unable to be team players within the UK political framework. It wasn’t the UK Government that engineered these turn of events, it was the Nicola Sturgeon.

Mrs May and her senior colleagues in London would have adopted “meaningful engagement” with the devolved administrations regarding the UK-EU relationship, the fault doesn’t lie with them.

To give you an example of what I mean, while pleading for a place at the talks, Nicola Sturgeon said:

“We're seeing the Government yet again put the interests of the Conservative Party ahead of the interests of the country.”

This is untrue; the Prime Minister Theresa May is putting into effect the democratic vote of the people of the UK to leave the European Union. As we have seen in all parties, there are people who are on both sides of the debate on UK membership.

Are you clear now why such a wretched creature like Nicola Sturgeon is shut out of the talks, the woman is simply ghastly, or as former Government Minister David Laws put it, “a cold and unattractive” without the good grace to turn up on time for meetings.

Apparently it is over a year since the last plenary meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee. The Committee is chaired by the PM, but there is no date been set for a JMC to discuss the on-going talks with Brussels. There is no sign that the devolved administrations will get onboard with a UK approach so any meeting would be rather pointless.

Yesterday, Downing Street made clear that the UK would not be part of any customs union following withdrawal from the EU, unable or unwilling to adapt to the new political landscape, Nicola Sturgeon said on the BBC:

"It is overwhelmingly in the interests of the country, our economy, to remain within the customs union and the single market. It is a real frustration that there hasn’t been more discussion and engagement with not just with the Scottish Government but with all the devolved administrations. I’ll be writing in fact to the Prime Minister later today ahead of her discussions in her Cabinet sub-Committee, where, we are told, they will decide or at least make some decisions about what they are trying to achieve here.”

She added:

“It’s unacceptable that that is happening without meaningful engagement without the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish administrations.”

Too stupid to change, too slow to react to new information, when you mean people like virtual signalling Nicola Sturgeon, the word ‘dense’ comes to mind. Too dense to realise that she has to be part of the solutions and not part of the underlying problems.

Opposition for opposition’s sake!

Now, Nicola Sturgeon should be waking up to the fact that, a simple fact, that is she is not relevant, she isn’t at the centre of events, she is on the fringe, she isn’t making contributions, she is an outcast.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University