Nicola's level
You often get misunderstood when you're as brilliant as the First Minister.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump’s wild, fabulist pronouncements inspired a horrified curiosity in American journalists and a cynical delight in millions of voters.
The diverging reactions were explained thus: ‘The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.’
Nicola Sturgeon can’t take the press seriously because it insists on taking her literally. She was asked at her Tuesday media briefing why all 40-to-49 year olds hadn’t received their second dose of the Covid vaccine by 26 July.
You won’t believe how those inky pedants had come up with such a specific target and precise date: they had gone and rewatched some thing from a month ago where someone said, ‘By 26 July, we expect to have given second doses to all 40 to 49-year-olds.’
And, get this, just because that thing was a statement to the Scottish Parliament and the someone who made it was the First Minister, they were now expecting her to explain it. The nerve of these people.
Don't worry, though. Nicola was ready for them.
‘When I communicate, and I apologise if this is an error, I kind of communicate at a level where I assume a certain level of intelligence on the part of people listening to me... and I assume a certain ability to attach context and common sense to what I am saying,' she explained.
Now, the bit about assuming the intelligence of people she's speaking to is a little white lie — she has, one presumes, had conversations with Angus MacNeil — but her central point stands. And that point is that she's so much smarter than you and it's your fault if you can't understand how she uses words.
Sturgeon, who was briefing the media while mentally completing the New York Times crossword and getting her doctorate in propositional calculus, lamented ‘an interpretation by opposition politicians and by some journalists'.
They had somehow got it into their smaller, less advanced heads that, when she said all 40-to-49 year olds would have been 'given' their second dose by a certain date, 'what I actually meant [was] that I was giving a guarantee that, by a certain date, 100 per cent of people would not just have been offered the vaccine but would have had the vaccine'.
The First Minister's contention was that, contrary to centuries of standard usage, 'have given' is really the future perfect tense of 'to offer'. In the bad old days, SNP leaders were open to the charge of being anti-English but Nicola Sturgeon might be the first to have it in for the language.
Whichever special adviser suggested the First Minister go on camera and argue that, not only hadn't she missed another Covid target, but that the target had never existed, and that people only thought it existed because they couldn't keep up with the First Minister's intellectual pedigree, should know that, with their P45, comes the thanks of a grateful nation that really needed cheering up.
When Nicola Sturgeon humble-brags about her dazzling erudition, you don’t just cringe at her, you cringe for her. It's not that she's a stupid person, it's just that these cognitive powers that she reckons disorient everyone else are so disorienting that no one had noticed them before now.
She's like a once critically-hyped band that thinks their latest album isn't selling because no one gets the concept, not because the concept is terrible songs and more cow bells.
Sturgeon is a middle-of-the-road intellect and if she sometimes seems more impressive than that, it’s because of the particular stretch of road she’s cruising down. As cerebral thoroughfares go, Holyrood is the very definition of a low-emission zone.
So Nicola Sturgeon didn't miss her target, she's just too galaxy-brained to be understood by mere mortals. If we can’t take the First Minister literally and we can’t take her seriously, it might be best if we took her microphone away.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on July 28, 2021.
Wonderfully written.
Brilliant writing and analysis by stephen as usual