Celebrity First Minister

Nicola Sturgeon is an icon of identity politics.

Nicola Sturgeon is everywhere these days.

She’s been popping up left and right at the Edinburgh Fringe. She’s been featured in a Guardian photoshoot modelling a Veronica Beard power suit and a slinky pair of Jimmy Choos. She even bagged a selfie with Basil Brush. Boom boom!

I am something of a critic of the First Minister — you might have noticed — but when she relaxes and lets her guard down ever-so-slightly it’s possible to glimpse the Sturgeon that so charms her admirers. She does well in arts and literary settings. These are the people she esteems and she seems to bask in their approval. 

Photoshoots work for her, too. For someone once written off as a political anorak with a bad hairdo, even a critic can take satisfaction in how she has defied so much of that outdated thinking with an image that is stylish but organic to who she is. The geek has inherited the earth.

But it is in the success of the Sturgeon brand that the failings of the Sturgeon record can be seen all the more starkly. The Sturgeon brand has never been stronger: after eight years in Bute House, she still dominates Scottish politics and public life like no other. She is the great constant, a consummate survivor with the shards of the glass ceiling scattered around her feet. 

Is she anything more than that? Well, she's an election-winning juggernaut, a master strategist, and a canny tactician. Yes, but what does she do with it? The blunt answer is: not much. For all her talents and all her good fortune, Sturgeon remains for the most part an image. The people who love her really love her, but even they would be hard-pressed to list her accomplishments. 

In a sense, she is the ideal First Minister for our times. Identity is everything with her. Material reality doesn't come into it. You vote for Brand Sturgeon because Brand Sturgeon is tied to Brand Independence and Brand Independence is the brand you identify with. 

There's no use in pointing out that Sturgeon hasn't brought independence one inch closer in eight years. What matters is that she tends the pro-independence identity and gives you anti-independence identities to rail against. Her indyref2 gambit is the ultimate in postmodern politics, offering an image of another referendum rather than an actual referendum. 

It is just as futile to draw attention to her many failings in office. Whether it is the attainment gap, hospital waiting times, council cuts, drugs deaths, Ferguson Marine, or BiFab, Sturgeon is, by all objective indicia, an unmitigated failure. She has not taken Scotland forward, she has held it back. She has not been a bold reformer, but an indolent tinkerer with the status quo. 

Her opponents despair at how she gets away with this but their mistake is in judging her by the standards of political leadership. Nicola Sturgeon is not a political leader, she's a political celebrity. 

Like all celebrities, she revels in the spotlight. Seldom does she look as at home as she did on stage with broadcaster Iain Dale. From there, she fired off jibes at political opponents for the entertainment of a decidedly sparse audience. (Perhaps those in attendance, mindful of the First Minister’s leadership during the pandemic, had decided to socially distance themselves.) 

She offered this assessment of Ruth Davidson: ‘She wants to have all the easy bits of a political career, she just doesn’t want to have any of the scrutiny or accountability or have to bother with putting herself up for election.’

Say what you like about Davidson but she fought an election to become leader of her party. She didn’t inherit the post from her future former life-long friend in politics. 

However, it was Sturgeon's comments about Liz Truss that claimed the most ink. Asked about the Tory leadership frontrunner's description of her as an 'attention-seeker', Sturgeon mentioned that all Truss had wanted to talk about at COP26 was 'how she could get into Vogue'. Cue lots of excited scribbling in journalists' notebooks about an alleged conversation nine months ago.

Frankly, I was impressed by Sturgeon's power of recall. Fortunately Truss didn’t mention any internal Scottish Government investigations or the First Minister’s memory might have blanked out the whole conversation. 

This sort of swipe at a female opponent owes more to celebrity feuding than conventional political bad-mouthing. Maybe I’m being sexist but I had always thought there was — or at least ought to be — a sense of solidarity between female politicians. That they could go hammer and tongs at one another in public but behind the scenes were able to talk unguardedly, exchange experiences and share confidences. 

For all the progress made, men still dominate in politics and women have to rely on other women for the kind of advice that, were they to ask a colleague or an adviser, would likely end up in Private Eye. Advice, for instance, like: how do you get yourself featured in one of the best-selling women’s magazines in the world?

It was fair game for Truss to take a swipe at Sturgeon. It would have been fair game for Sturgeon to take a swipe back. But she didn’t do that. She went lower and more personal. She betrayed a confidence in a way that she knew would humiliate a woman in the public eye. 

Not just humiliate her, either, but humiliate her on the very terms that women in the public eye are often humiliated. She wanted everyone to know Truss was vain, obsessed by celebrity, and eager to appear in a fashion magazine. She may as well have come out and called her a blonde airhead because, let's be honest, that’s what she was implying.

Even then, there might have been a certain admirable brutality if Sturgeon had embarrassed Truss for political advantage. If she had waited until her first visit to Scotland as Prime Minister to let slip about the Vogue conversation. Lump the new PM with distracting questions from journalists about something trivial at the very moment when she is trying to make a good first impression in Scotland. 

That would have been cold. Cruel, even. But there would have been a Machiavellian malevolence to it that could be savoured by connoisseurs of political skullduggery. Recall the televised debate between Scottish leaders during the 2017 general election, when Sturgeon revealed the contents of a private conversation in which, she alleged, then Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale spoke about dropping her party’s opposition to indyref2 in the wake of Brexit. 

It was an unpardonable disclosure but there was an electoral logic behind it. Dugdale was campaigning against another referendum. Sturgeon’s blabbing told both pro-independence and pro-Union Labour voters that they couldn’t trust Dugdale, no doubt helping to drive some of the former to the SNP and the latter to the Tories. Sturgeon could have shown the same cunning with Truss. Instead, she threw her secret tidbit out there for laughs to a half-empty hall of Fringe-goers. 

The performance took precedence over the politics. It might be the first time we've seen that from Nicola Sturgeon. Until now her political celebrity has generally been put in service of her immediate political needs. Rather than wounding Liz Truss, she has helped her get an embarrassing moment out in the open before she enters Downing Street. She has also taught Boris Johnson's likely successor a valuable lesson: with Nicola Sturgeon, there's no such thing as off the record. 

Much like her tenure in Bute House, Sturgeon's revelation about Truss achieved nothing except burnishing her image as a different kind of politician. In truth, she is a different kind of celebrity, a performer who trades on a carefully choreographed progressive brand targeted at youngish, leftish voters who are looking for an identity rather than a leader. In Nicola Sturgeon, they have found their icon.

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Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on August 15, 2022.