The Weight of Sturgeon’s Guilt; ‘Friends’ of SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon claim to be “worried” about the toll the Alex Salmond affair is having on her, as the trickle of ‘poor Nicola’ stories ramps up, we shouldn’t be concerned with the supposed angst of a nasty bitter twisted individual like her who has done so much harm to Scotland, we should marvel at why the SNP continues their PR campaign which has continually failed to make her likeable, what a waste of money, people are deserting Sturgeon!

Dear All 

Here are some examples to test your sympathy level, end of the Second World War, Hitler blows his brains out, Himmler and Goering poison themselves. Did the public suffer angst in Britain or in any of the former occupied countries? I don’t think so, but what about other figures in history, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Moors Murderers, did you feel any sympathy for them when they got locked up? What about the Yorkshire ripper or Harold Shipman, I take it you didn’t see them as ‘free spirits’? 

When fast forwarding to modern and recent times, what about ex SNP MP Natalie McGarry, did her Court room plight move you to tears? Will you be moved when she is re-tried in a court of law again? Do you think you will join a Natalie McGarry is innocent campaign? When you heard about SNP MSP Derek Mackay who was ‘outed’ for texting a ‘cute’ 16 year old boy, did you think, this was on a par with the Robert Redford movie, ‘The way we were’ or did you think Mackay was a dirty sleazy bastard? Have you ever noticed that you and the rest of joe public generally have little or no sympathy for bastards?  

I suspect that the list which I have put above, none of them moved you to sympathy, which begs the question, why? Is it because you are basically not a very sympathetic person or is it as I believe, you genuinely don’t like bastards? Not only do you not like bastards, you don’t hang around with them either. You avoid their company because being around them makes you feel uncomfortable and uneasy. Hanging around vile nasty fake people unsettles us, especially when they want to use us for their ends. 

Political parties in Scotland, when someone is elevated to leadership sometimes have to do what is called a ‘makeover’ of a politician. Makeovers are done on people because their personality is so bad and their demeanour is so toxic. It is done to win votes and cover up their flaws. A makeover was done on SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, she had the media training, she had the dress makeover and she had ‘myth’ continually shoved down people’s throats that she was a nice person. 

Her makeover was concentrated on the ‘nice person’ persona, so periodically; we saw ‘Nicola with kids’, the message if you didn’t get it was simple. Nicola is with kids, Nicola is smiling, kids are smiling; therefore kids trust Nicola. And if kids trust Nicola, then you should trust her too. There is a problem with the ‘nice person’ persona, you see unless you are actually are a nice person, under pressure you revert to type. You know it as ‘the mask slips’. When the mask slips, the true nature of the person is revealed, in Nicola Sturgeon’s case, it is of an angry bitter vicious individual who is a control freak. 

As a casual observer of the SNP ‘civic war’, you can see one thing emerging; clearly, Nicola Sturgeon’s close allies have lost two key battles in the attempt to destroy Alex Salmond. You have seen the Sturgeon faction continue their campaign against him from the shadows. You have seen Sturgeon and her government being called ‘liars’, you have seen how the Sturgeon faction is blocking Salmond supporters from progressing within the party. You will have also noticed how quickly Nicola Sturgeon turned on one of her own SNP MPs for an act of stupidity, who was also a Salmond supporter. Nicola Sturgeon is being attacked from inside the SNP and from outside the SNP. She really is fighting a losing battle because she is fighting on two fronts. As a fan of the series, The World at War, this quote from it was used from Mein Kampf in the series, it sticks out, ‘never fight a war on two fronts’. It uses up too much time, too many people and too much resources, a few blog posts ago, I commented that Sturgeon was in retreat as Alex Salmond’s ‘armour’ rolls ever westward. Comrade Salmond is as cold as a Siberian winter, his troops are fresh and aren’t in the mood to take prisoners. They want their chance for revenge; they want to bayonet the wounded. And prior to that, they want the allies of Sturgeon to know, they will be getting bayoneted too. 

As the circle tightens around SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, the bunker mentality is noticeable. She wants to buy time which is why so many ‘woke’ SNP candidates are coming out of the woodwork. Sturgeon’s ‘Volkssturm’ is a rather oddball collection of characters. You will see more of them if anyone is dumb enough to make them the candidate in a constituency or high on the regional lists. In the Sturgeon bunker, you can almost feel the pressure buckling the walls, which is why we get one of Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘alleged’ oldest friends and a member of the SNP hierarchy talking about the toll of the ongoing Alex Salmond saga on her. 

Poor Nicola, is that a joke, is everyone expected to suspend belief and forget about what has happened, all that has happened? Regardless of what the ‘believer’ says, how many people have trouble wrapping their heads round the concept of Nicola Sturgeon having ‘friends’, never mind having an ‘oldest friend’? If that person was in Margaret Ferrier’s covid shoes, would Nicola have thrown them under the bus? If your answer is no, then you need to catch up on your Scottish politics, you really do. Nicola isn’t loyal to anyone, she is a user, and when she can’t ‘use’ someone like Ferrier, she has no problem abandoning them. In Sturgeon’s mind destroying Ferrier’s career and income is simply the right thing to do. 

Anyway, an alleged friend said: 

“Privately, my main worry is that it (Salmond affair) becomes so exhausting for her that she just throws in the towel.” 

You see; Nicola Sturgeon is the ‘paint’ covering up the festering black mold that is the SNP, her ‘friend’ maybe looking at one eye on the future, which means a ‘clear out’ in the SNP for some. Who knows if their face will be suitable to the new order? I can imagine that there are a lot in the SNP who are connected to Sturgeon at the hip, fearful of their future job prospects. The hint of this angst is the admission that they’re not the only confidante or party insider troubled about what the Salmond inquiry is doing to Sturgeon personally. 

So, what is Nicola Sturgeon worried about, what causes her so much pressure? Well to cut to the chase, its …. the truth! Yes, sadly, Nicola Sturgeon is worried sick by the truth coming out. She is worried what public opinion will be when this whole sorry mess is laid bare before the public. She is worried what the public will think when it is revealed how close some of the ‘alphabet women’ are connected to her. 

You know, there is a saying, the truth shall set you free, but in the case of Nicola Sturgeon, no one would believe that truth will reset her image with the public. The press seem to be doing a lesser job of holding her to account, which is why they publish ‘puff’ pieces about how ‘fragile’ she is. How the mounting pressure is intolerable on her and what that means for the SNP, the future of independence, and the governance of Scotland. To be blunt, the SNP as I have always maintained is a ‘rat ship’, second, there is no future for Scottish independence, that boat sailed in 2014. As to the governance of Scotland, pre Salmond ‘fit up’ and ‘cover up’, the governance of this country was woefully incompetent and down right awful! 

The Salmond inquiry is wonderfully toxic for Nicola Sturgeon; she is getting a taste of what her and her nasty party have doled out for years to other people and organisations but doesn't enjoy it, she'd rather kick than be kicked it seems. 

It’s not just politically damaging, it’s also dripping poison all over Sturgeon, and everyone associated with it within her clique. The press played a part in building up Nicola Sturgeon, an image based on a lie, but when you note how reporters drift between political parties and press for jobs, you can see why certain ones swing between them easily, they work in some cases hand in glove. Nicola Sturgeon, it is said won incredible levels of trust from the Scottish public during covid pandemic, this is because the Scottish public were ignorant of what truly was going on. 

Did Nicola Sturgeon stand at the podium and tell you that she and Health Sec Jeane Freeman cleaned out infected elderly patients out of hospitals and stuck them in uncontaminated care homes? What would you have thought if you had known this was the SNP Governments agenda? What do you think now that you have this information, are you overflowing with ‘trust’ for Nicola? Thousands of elderly people are dead because of what the Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP Government done, as she said, she is making the decisions in Scotland. 

When I read the press saying something along the lines that ‘the average punter, Sturgeon seems a pretty decent woman with her heart in the right place’, all I see is a myth to place reporters in two camps, current employment and possible future employment. How can anyone serious write that ‘Sturgeon seems a pretty decent woman with her heart in the right place’? Interesting, when Dr Harold Shipman was doing his mass murdering, he had a tremendous write up by people who were blissfully unaware that he was killing off his elderly patients. Post fighting out the truth, Shipman's reviews tanked! 

What a difference does knowledge make in our lives, the truth is black and white. You, get a greyed out version, meaning you have to join up all the dots, very few are handing you the truth in the press. They built up Sturgeon, they were complicit in her rise, they never did their job properly because it was so easy to join the gravy train, and in return the SNP fed those flotsam stories for their papers. Did you know the SNP pump out so many stories that the quality is like sewage, all done to bump other stories off the front page. 

The real story of the press being fed Nicola Sturgeon is ‘worried’, isn’t the interwoven yarns spun by ‘close friends’, and colleagues in the SNP hierarchy, or their current fluffy version of the toll the Salmond affair has on her. It is watching her reaction to questions on the Salmond affair, look past her pre-scripted answers and see the look in her eyes. The mask increasingly slips, the mouth tightens but occasionally a nasty comment flies back at the questioner as it can’t be contained anymore. Media trained Sturgeon rarely appears rattled by tame questioning, but Salmond has rattled her. Salmond isn’t walking away; he and his followers want her destruction for what they perceive as an ‘injustice’ that must be righted.

As the question stands, who would replace Sturgeon? There’s nobody to fill her shoes because she engineered it so, done with one simple objective, that no one could threaten her leadership. No heir in waiting, no one replacing Derek Mackay. Colleagues are standing well back from her, because they want no part of her. Why aren’t her supporters, friends and colleagues not publicly coming out to support her? Why are they in the shadows? If they believe everything was done correctly, why hide? 

Finally, you will  have heard about Nicola Sturgeon’s tales of woe recently, you have seen the other breadcrumbs of she is “depressed”, you have seen her slumped in her Holyrood chair. 

Are you moved to sympathy yet? 

I mean how many breadcrumbs do the SNP think they need to feed you to get you to change your opinion about her? Do they seriously think they can make you her ally? I don’t think there is enough grain in the silos to make enough breadcrumbs to lay a big enough trail for you to swallow. You cannot have any faith in Nicola Sturgeon because of what she has done not just in the covid crisis but in the response to the wider problems of the governance of Scotland. One close ‘friend’ of Sturgeon who obviously wants to remain nameless said that the idea of a woman falling on her sword as the final act of the Salmond saga would be intolerable. Well, it seems that Sturgeon has two options, one fall on her sword, or two, wait around till she gets stabbed in the back by her ‘friends’, Julius Caesar style. 

Either way the blade is going in!

Yours sincerely

George Laird                                                                                                                                The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University