Profile of Sturgeon from todays Sunday Times… Nicola’s Reign The ‘nippy sweetie’ Nicola Sturgeon is now SNP leader, but what can we expect from the first woman in charge at Holyrood, asks Gillian Bowditch Published: 19 October 2014 Nicola Sturgeon refused to endorse any of the candidates for the deputy leadership Nicola Sturgeon refused to endorse any of the candidates for the deputy leadership The staff at Bute House are used to changeovers but the prospect of their first female boss in 15 years is a daunting one. Those who know Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister-elect, insist there is little to worry about. While Alex Salmond joked to the late Donald Dewar during one of their rare soirees in the official residence that his wife Moira had a tape measure in her bag to measure up the curtains, Sturgeon, nicknamed “the nippy sweetie,” has made a virtue of her lack of domesticity. She may be making history but she won’t be making dinner. Ask her why she never learnt to drive and she will tell you that, as with starting a family or learning to cook, she “just never got round to it”. But with her predecessor still occupying the news agenda along with the neoclassical mansion and a large corner office in the Scottish government buildings, Sturgeon’s staff may be forgiven for wondering exactly who is in the driving seat. While Salmond cuts a lonely figure, increasingly obsessed about his status and perceived leaks to the media, Sturgeon has no need of the trappings of high office to bolster her position. “She won’t be lording it over people,” says a colleague. “I’m not sure how she and [her husband] Peter [Murrell] will take to living in Bute House. It is hard to imagine them in that environment.” “Nicola is very comfortable with power,” says another. “It will take Alex some time to adjust to life without the circus that dances attendance on the leader but Nicola’s strength is that she doesn’t really care much for such things. You are unlikely to see her leading junkets to China. Her focus will be Scotland.” Last week Sturgeon was confirmed as leader of the Scottish National party after the deadline for nominations passed with no other contenders. She will be formally endorsed at the SNP conference in mid-November before seeking the approval of the Scottish parliament and the Queen to become Scotland’s first female first minister. Sturgeon becomes leader of the SNP with the party at its zenith. Membership has surged to 80,000, up from 25,000 before the referendum, and dwarfing Labour’s reputed 13,000 members. With the new powers of the Scotland Act 2012 coming on-stream and more promised under the guise of the controversial “vow” signed by the three main Westminster party leaders and now being hammered out by the Smith commission, she will have more clout than any Scottish leader in more than 300 years. So what will she do with it? Will Sturgeon’s reign be remembered for a radical change in direction or will her priority be ensuring stability? What are the pitfalls for this career politician with a weakness for heels and a reputation for rarely putting a foot wrong? Who will be the winners and losers under her patronage? THE lack of a leadership contest and the mandate that brings may come to haunt her when the going gets tough, as it did for former prime minister Gordon Brown and one of Sturgeon’s predecessors as first minister, Jack McConnell. Despite the fact that the real battle for the future direction of the party now rests with the deputy leadership campaign, Sturgeon has decided against endorsing any of the candidates — the favourite, transport minister Keith Brown; the MP for Dundee East, Stewart Hosie, and the minister for training, youth and women’s employment, Angela Constance. Constance, who has pitched her campaign at disaffected grassroots nationalists, has ruled out becoming deputy first minister if she wins the deputy SNP role, insisting she will focus instead on delivering independence. In a veiled warning to the leadership, Constance said last week: “There is a temptation for any political party to become satisfied with what it has achieved, even where that falls short of the ideal. As deputy leader of the SNP, I shall argue that we, as a party, must stay focused on the goal of an independent Scotland.” “The contest is effectively between Angela Constance and Keith Brown, and if Angela wins, Nicola Sturgeon’s got trouble,” says John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University. “Angela is basically standing on a fundamentalist ticket, saying we stand for independence, whereas it is pretty clear that the leadership wants to go down the gradualist route.” Having won a direct mandate from the party in the only contested part of the leadership election, whoever becomes deputy will be in a particularly strong position and could make life uncomfortable for Sturgeon. In an effort to counter any criticism over a perceived coronation, the new leader is reaching out beyond the rank and file of the SNP to the electorate. A speaking tour of the country has sold out in many venues with an event at the 12,000-seat SSE Hydro in Glasgow almost fully booked. She is also planning to engage with voters online in a monthly question and answer session on Facebook. Friends say she has learnt the lessons of Salmond’s isolationism and desire to surround himself with acolytes and is determined to lead an outward-looking, open and accessible government. Her position will be bolstered by the role of her husband Peter Murrell, the SNP’s chief executive, who is overseeing the party’s membership expansion. They are a formidable power couple and while Murrell likes to stay out of the limelight, he is in a prime position to consolidate his wife’s power base. Despite having joined the party 28 years ago at the tender age of 16, Sturgeon has managed to steer clear of cliques and factions. “Even when the party was going through turmoil, she didn’t take sides,” says one who knows her well. While that stands her in good stead, it does mean there is no #teamNicola. “She has to develop more of a hinterland,” says a member of the SNP. “She hasn’t been like Alex and closeted herself away but she hasn’t got the range and depth of friendships she needs. She has been a bit separate from the rest of the cabinet and the members of the parliamentary party. She has to widen that circle. Having said that, she is a well-grounded individual and she will listen. There was a harsher edge to her 10 or 15 years ago with the whole nippy sweetie thing and that has largely gone.” Sturgeon is expected to reshape her cabinet after the party conference in November. The government’s annual legislative programme has been postponed for two months until she becomes leader officially, leading to opposition taunts of “a zombie government”. “The worst aspect of Alex’s legacy is that there is a dearth of talent she can promote,” says one senior party member. Holyrood watchers expect Alex Neil, the health minister, and Kenny MacAskill, the beleaguered justice minister, to face demotion. Fergus Ewing, the right-wing minister for tourism and the environment and one of the few with private sector experience, may also go. Derek Mackay, the SNP’s business convener, Shona Robison, minister for sport and equality who helped to deliver the Commonwealth Games, Michael Matheson, the public health minister, and rising star Humza Yousaf are all tipped for promotion. Ewing’s sister Annabelle may ensure that nationalist dynasty remains represented in government while helping to secure Sturgeon’s feminist aims. The first sign of Sturgeon’s likely direction came in John Swinney’s budget with the land and buildings transaction tax, which replaced stamp duty. Sales of properties worth more than £324,300 will be adversely affected by the change, leading to fears that Sturgeon has the middle classes firmly in her sights for a tax raid and disquieting members on the right of the SNP. “We made the step too quickly,” said one senior SNP figure of the new tax. “It would be better if we had graduated to it but it is done and I’m not too unhappy about it. One of the lessons from the referendum campaign is that there was a lot of fear in the financial community. Much of that was about currency but we need to ask what we can do to give business a competitive advantage in Scotland. We need to move on from the agenda that says the only answer is a cut in corporation tax.” Curtice argues that those who see Sturgeon as the champion of the left may be disappointed. “What are the major legislative provisions which this SNP government has passed which would not have been passed by an SNP government that did not have an overall majority? I’m struggling to come up with much,” he says. “Here is a government that has had an overall majority and what has it done to change the face of Scotland in the last three years?” Instead, like her predecessor, Sturgeon may find herself preoccupied with the constitution as the battle for more powers develops. “We are on an accelerated timetable for developing the proposals,” says Curtice. “We are not on an accelerated timetable as far as implementation is concerned. “Whatever the new powers turn out to be, they will have to go through Westminster and Holyrood. It will take at least 12 months to pass the legislation, which takes you to the fag end of this Holyrood government. New powers could take two or three years to implement fully and Nicola could have been and gone by that time.” Curtice warns that without a public debate and a referendum on further powers, the chance of Scotland having a stable constitutional settlement is slim. “It’s a dog’s breakfast,” he says of the row over more powers, which saw Gordon Brown take on William Hague in Westminster last week. “There hasn’t been a proposal on which we can focus and upon which there has been anything in the way of serious public debate. “What we are heading towards, apparently, is a stitch up between the Westminster parties, done very quickly, with very little in the way of public debate and very little in the way of public education. Nobody is suggesting that the public should be consulted except through the medium of a complete farce of a general election in which all the political parties are in favour of the same thing. “I think we should have a referendum on this. In the last two years we have had a significant debate about independence, which has undoubtedly educated the public. We are nowhere near that position on more powers. Unless we get public buy-in to what is being proposed and the politicians can say, ‘This is what the people voted for and this is what Scotland wants,’ in five years’ time the SNP will be able to claim it is not enough. “The timetable forces the parties to come up with a proposal before the general election; it does not lay out the process for after May 2015. It would still be perfectly possible to have a public debate and a referendum on the proposals after that and I think that is something the Smith Commission should be thinking very seriously about.”
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:15:46 +0000
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