Falling In Love with Nicola!
How my love affair with Nicola began.
My one-way love affair with Nicola Sturgeon, or Mrs. Murrell as she was later to become, started on the stormy evening of the 8th of February 2006. It was the last night of campaigning before the vote in the Dunfermline by election caused by the death of the sitting Labour MP, and as I pulled away from my house in a nice warm car there was 35 year old Nicola, like a drookit rat, head down against the cold, driving rain, hurrying up the steep pavement opposite my house. She looked so small and vulnerable as if she might be in danger of being blown back down the terrace.
Nicola was known to me because I recognised her from television and the first political rally, that I, as a 58 year old retiree attended on Glasgow Green (a Stop-The-War demo ) in February 2003.
With a daughter the same age as Nicola the frail figure she portrayed jarred my paternal instincts and it crossed my mind to invite her into my home to dry out and join my wife and I in a warming cup of tea, but the politics of the situation prevented me from acting on that impulse. However I was very impressed by her apparent dedication to the election campaign of her colleague.
The politics? I was standing as a candidate in that by-election for the Abolish Forth Bridge Tolls Party, a political party I had formed a matter of days earlier and Nicola was apparently doing some last minute canvassing for Douglas Chapman, SNP, one of the 8 candidates in that election.
Why was I standing for parliament?
Not out of political ambition that’s for sure. I’ve never been a member of a political party in my life, and had no ambitions in politics, so my foray into it came about by accident.
I like to think of myself as a fair-minded person so when I read a newspaper article critical of George Campbell, a Fife man who had lodged an objection to the Forth Estuary Transport Authority’s (FETA) proposed increase in the Forth Bridge tolls (which had the effect of triggering a public inquiry), I offered to support him.
I agreed with George’s objection, as the tolls should have been removed in 1995 when the bridge was paid for, but despite widespread reporting of George Campbell’s principled stance I was the only Scot to back his objection and in an eleventh hour bid I petitioned the Court of Session to have the inquiry cisted to allow the court to examine four substantive matters which I believe proved the proposed increase was invalid. The main one being the FETA Bill had no sponsor, which raised the question “are Forth tolls legal?” LINK.
In the event my legal challenge to have the public inquiry temporarily halted at an emergency Court of Session hearing before Lord Drummond-Young failed, but I continued to support George Campbell and appeared as a witness at the public inquiry. The only other person to support George was Liverpool based, John McGoldrick of National Alliance Against Tolls.
Despite our best arguments in support of the objection at the inquiry The Recorder approved the toll increase for early 2005. Undaunted by this setback George, myself and a few others decided to continue our campaign to have the toll increase stopped in any way we could and within that period, on 5th January 2006, my local MP, Rachel Squired died suddenly, triggering a by-election.
The date for the by-election was announced as being the 8th of February, a mere one month after Rachel’s death, so after some chat about this by phone, e-mail etc. our wee group decided to have a meeting to adopt a policy to best promote our objection to the small toll increase that The Reporter had approved, as well as a much larger proposed increase to the Forth Road Bridge toll, which was part of a wider road tolling ambition of the Scottish government driven by the Lib Dems.
Our groups hired a room in the Lochgelly Centre on 23rd January and I opened the meeting with a passionate plea on the desirability of forming a single-issue political party with a name that would get publicity for our campaign to contest the election. It was agreed unanimously by the four of us in attendance that this was a good idea.
As the oldest, and only retired member of our group, I thought it would be ideal for a younger member, such as Lorna Gratton, a trade union activist to be our candidate, so I proposed her. Lorna declined and, in return proposed me!
The other two members voted in favour of Lorna’s proposal so I found myself in the position of having convinced the group that this was a good move being unable to decline their invitation. And so it was that I reluctantly agreed to stand as the candidate for an as yet constituted political party. A party formed, not with the purpose of winning an election, but of capturing some of the intense media interest in the by-election, to aid our cause.
What to call the party?
The Electoral Commission were very helpfully and within 48 hours of our meeting I had managed to register a political party in the name of Abolish Forth Bridge Tolls Party and on the 26th of January a week before my 61st birthday I lodged the party’s Nomination Papers and cash deposit with Fife Council.
With under a fortnight remaining I had to organise leaflets, posters etc for the election, and it was as I was hurrying out to post leaflets and tie posters up on trees, lamp posts, that my path crossed that of the doggedly determined Nicola on Victoria Terrace.
Above: Gathering dust in my loft, some of the 100 posters that were posted on trees, lampposts etc., all over Dunfermline and West Fife in 2006
Beaten but not disgraced at the polls.
At the time of the by-election I was a supporter of the SNP and wished Douglas Chapman well at the count as I thought he had the best chance of replacing Labour in their stronghold of West Fife, but in the event was surprised when Willie Rennie stunned all the pollsters by his resounding victory.
Willie’s win was down in no small measure to him latching on to the evident unpopularity of the Forth Road Bridge tolls and while all four major parties supported these bridge tolls as official policy, and the LibDems wanted to extend this to road tolls, the opportunistic Willie, caught the zeitgeist and took to hand rubber-stamping Lib Dem leaflets with “No Toll Increase”.
Anyway, I lost, made my statement congratulating Willie at the count and issued it in writing, pointing out that a political party aged less than two weeks hadn’t done too badly against the old hands and with 1.1% of the votes cast (374) polled 6th out of 8, higher than UKIP! LINK
More to like about the SNP and Nicola
Although the policy of the SNP at the 2006 by election, like that of the other main parties, was in favour of bridge tolls on the Forth Road Bridge, they had obviously learned that this policy was a vote loser, particularly because tolls on the Tay, Skye and Kingston bridges had been scrapped, so just a year later when John Swinney published the SNP manifesto for the 2007 Holyrood General Election it included a promise to abolish all bridge tolls.
The success of the SNP in the 2007 Holyrood elections gave all anti-toll campaigners a boost and in February 2008 the SNP, true to their manifesto pledge scrapped all tolls. Those of us who had campaigned for the removal of the Forth Road Bridge tolls celebrated and disbanded, happy in the knowledge that we had done our bit to shed light on this unjust, additional tax on motorists.
I was happy to vote for the SNP in subsequent elections and strongly supported the Yes vote in the 2014 devolution referendum only to be left bitterly disappointed when that aspiration fell short of the winning post (See Referendum Reflections this blogsite). However, I was buoyed when Nicola took over from Alex Salmond. I believed what I had witnessed back in 2006 was evidence of how dedicated and determined she was in pursuit of a just cause, and these are qualities I believe we shared, so consequently felt a strong affinity with her.
More common ground with Nicola, Sunderland, shipwright ancestors, I declare my admiration.
I had observed Nicola’s rise to fame with something akin to paternal pride. That wee lassie, looking like a drookit rat, that I had felt sorry for outside my house was now leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland. My sense of affinity with Nicola reached new heights when I read of how she had travelled to Sunderland to pay homage to her ancestors who included her late great grandfather, a shipwright who worked in the yards on the river Wear. LINK
This news was music to my ears! I had been fostered and brought up by my uncle Jack, a Sunderland shipwright, and had myself served a 5-year shipwright apprenticeship in Rosyth Dockyard.
Like Nicola I valued the sacrifices of my English ancestors and on retirement in 2001 had campaigned for a memorial to be erected in Sunderland to those who (like my own grandfather) had died in accidents in the Wearside shipyards. Even though that campaign didn’t engender much interest I went ahead and designed and had erected a memorial to him as well as all of the other men and boys who had lost their lives or suffered injuries in the Wearside shipbuilding industry on the then unmarked grave of my Sunderland gradfather.
Memorial at Bishopwearmouth Cemetery Sunderland
Overflowing with admiration for Nicola I just had to write and tell her how much I appreciated her achievement in becoming our First Minister, and how much I was moved by her apparent dedication to her colleague’s election campaign back in 2006 (and considered asking her into my home for a warming cuppa) and how I shared her recognition and pride in her English roots, telling her of my own Sunderland memorial to my grandfather. With paternal concern I also warned her about the ‘nest of vipers’ at Transport Scotland who had made John Swinney look so foolish with the estimated cost of a Forth Crossing tunnel. I concluding by saying there was no need to respond to my ‘fan mail’ as she was a busy woman.
At the time I felt a bit sheepish, as a 60 year old writing a letter of praise, especially to a politician, as I had spent most of my life criticising them, but such was my admiration for this woman, a woman I firmly believed would get us independence, I didn’t hesitate to do so – First Class Post.
Falling out of love with Nicola.
Nicola embraces NATO & Cold War
I can’t pinpoint when it was that I began to have doubts about Nicola, or when exactly my fulsome and unprecedented admiration for her began to wane, but it became noticeable that she and her husband had turned the SNP into a Murrell dynasty, a personality cult where Nicola the person, and not the independence of the nation, was paramount.
Not being a member of the SNP, or for that matter an observer of political parties in general, I was also vaguely aware that the party I had voted for was drifting away from the radical course I hoped to see it steer. I’d broken a lifelong habbit of voting Labour after the Iraq War, and was disturbed that the SNP’s commitment to NATO had split the party as many, like me, saw this as a vehicle for further foreign wars.
Nicola taking a selfie with Alastair Campbell, the man who when an intelligence report didn’t suggest Iraq’s had Weapons of Mass Destruction he, as Tony Blair’s Director of Communications/Strategy “sexed it up” to take us to war.
Also disturbing was Nicola’s openly declared admiration for ‘Hawks’ such as Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, in my opinion two of the biggest war criminals to disgrace the reputation of the United States.
Then there was Nicola’s willingness to march with those advocating support of LGBT freedoms, which was fine by me, compared to her reluctance to do the same at the AUOB rallies.
Also troubling was the alacrity with which Nicola bought the MI5/Tory government’s anti-Russian agenda regarding the poisoning of the Skripals. It’s not as if the Russians aren’t capable of such a crime, but to believe the people who brought us the Iraq War on the basis of a pack of lies about WMD weren’t capable of propaganda to discredit Russia was naive. However Nicola, after a trip to England for a private briefing by MI5, gave their Russian theory her ringing endorsement, without sharing with us the proof that had convinced her. “Trust me I’m a politician” seemed insufficient explanation for events that placed Scotland in the ice-blue corner with the UK/US in a new Cold War.
Nicola’s backing of the new cold war rhetoric seemed supportive of the UK’s attacks on Syria on the basis of equally unproven accusations of the use of nerve gas there. My main reason for wanting independence was to see Scotland leave the Imperial British War Club, not to be an honorary member of it!
Then there was the constant personalisation of the cause of independence by Nicola. It wasn’t about issues any more it was about her. The ubiquitous photos of Nicola posing for selfies with smiling young fans reminded me of seeing similar in the 1960s in China, when photos of Chairman Mao surrounded by smiling, adoring youngsters could be seen everywhere. Perhaps aptly as I type this blog I read the news that a selection of Nicola’s speeches have been published (apparently with government funding assistance) entitled “Women Hold Up Half the Sky” – a quote from Chairman Mao.
Above Nicola as seen by blogger Guido Fawkes. He’s not wrong.
Auld acquaintance is forgot by Nicola as are all details of the plot to jail him.
It may have been any one of the above things that made me begin to lose faith in Nicola, but by far the biggest turn off for me was the way she reacted to her long time best friend and political mentor Alex Salmond being found not guilty of alleged sex crimes (allegations that if proven could have seen him spend the rest of his life in prison) with silence.
To remain silent and not offer a word of support or congratulation on his being cleared of, what were obviously spurious allegations against him, was in my view unpardonable, but not inexplicable when subsequent revelations made it obvious that she was at the very heart of the attempted “stitch-up” by members of her close circle.
MSM compare Nicola to Jacinda but Scotland has 1,109 Cv19 deaths, New Zealand has 26!
Then throughout 2020/2021 there was the cack-handed handling of the Cv19 pandemic by Nicola, which sees us having at 9 May, 2021, having 10,109 Cv19 deaths, putting us among the world’s worst countries for per capita death statistics. If Nicola had paid as much attention to warnings from Italy and elsewhere she would have shut down earlier (as Ireland did) and been better prepared, this may have prevented about 5,000 unnecessary deaths.
In the manner of a dictator, Nicola surrounded herself with ministers and staff who would not be a threat to her, and so it was no surprise that the hapless Health Minister, Jeanne Freeman failed to take the pandemic seriously and made elementary mistakes with discharging Cv19 positive hospital patients into care homes, where they were tended by low-paid, untested carers.
The later folly, was thanks to another incompetent, the dentist, Jason Leitch, who like Nicola is big on smart presentations and patter, but short on efficacy, and who said at the start of the pandemic that testing care workers (like the public wearing of masks and avoiding large gatherings) was unnecessary.
Then we had Catherine Calderwood, Nicola’s Chief Medical Officer, who broke the Covid rules by taking a family break at her second home for two weeks running at the height of the pandemic. Despite this Nicola gave her a vote of confidence on the morning this revelation appeared in the press, before demoting her to a back-room role by lunchtime, then when she saw that this was not playing well, she finally accepted her resignation at tea-time.
Nicola, her CMO, and Leitch also advised fans it was safe to attend a football match at Ibrox on 14th March 2001 at a time when Ireland were shutting down and cancelling St Patrick’s day cellebrations. She seemed to be marching in lockstep with Boris Johnson and appeared less concerned with managing the crisis but more concerned with milking the daily Cv19 TV briefings and FMQ at Holyrood for her own ends as a vanity project. She even used these briefings to have a dig at her former mentor Alex Salmond, who by contrast kept a dignified silence and didn’t rise to her baiting.
Wonder Woman becomes Blunder Woman
When I thought my opinion of Nicola couldn’t get any lower there came her performance in front of the Holyrood Committee enquiring into the botched parliamentary complaint against Alex Salmond to prove me wrong. The woman who is the personification of professionalism when trotting out facts and figures that flatter her own cause and would wipe the floor with questions from journalists at her Cv19 Briefings, or MSPs who had the temerity to question her at FMQ, with glib, cutting answers and a plethora of statistics, suddenly became the very model of muddle and obfuscation.
The normally proficient Nicola “didn’t know”, “couldn’t recall” or “wasn’t there” at any of the key moments relating to events when a group of her close political and personal friends complained of sexual abuse by Alex Salmond. If this is to be believed Nicola went from being Wonder Woman to Blunder Woman. I don’t think anyone with an ounce of grey matter who watched her 8 hours of evidence could have believed a word she said.
Hitching my wagon to another train.
By the time the General Election came on May 7th I had gone from becoming an ardent and proclaimed admirer of Nicola Sturgeon to being a campaigner for Alba. I didn’t join the party, but supported it in a small way financially, and being incensed by the failure of the mainstream media to give Alba pre-election coverage (no doubt bribed by the £3m in advertising Nicola had recently given them) I bought and displayed a large banner proclaiming my support.
.
Flying high on the north Dunfermline skyline, my modest contribution to promote Alba.
Will it fly again?
My disdain for Nicola reached new heights during the 2021 election campaign, when in a televised debate she briefly recovered from her parliamentary committee amnesia to accuse Alex Salmond of wanting her to drop the sex pest allegations (about which she said she knew nothing) when he was not present to counter this claim.
In the hustings she also lied to the electorate in saying that a List vote was a vote for her as First Minister and urged voters to vote for SNP Constituency and List even though that meant 1 million List votes would go to Unionist parties or Greens and not to fellow nationalists and deprive the parliament of a super independent majority.
There was also evidence of Nicola’s complete control of the narrative when the report she commissioned James Hamilton QC, to carry out into her handling of the parliamentary complaints system used against Alex Salmond was published. This was said to exonerate Nicola, but we don’t know this for sure as Nicola’s staff had it heavily redacted with 1,119 words being hidden from us.
Such is the brilliance of Nicola’s acting that even now there are still occasions when I see her on television promising a 2nd Referendum and for a nanosecond I believe her, such is her polished PR persona. Then the scales fall from my eyes, I reflect and see clearly what she has become. Not the ardent, feisty advocate for independence with fire in her eyes that I once admired, but a sleekit wee establishment puppet who would sell her soul for a comfortable life in permanent opposition. A phony!
The Alba party may have failed in the short time it was active before the elections, but there is no doubt in my mind that there are many like me who have seen through the personality cult that the SNP has become. Once seen, Nicola can’t be unseen, and when her lame excuses for not holding a 2nd Referendum ring hollow to even the most naive and trusting SNP supporters I predict there will be mass deflections to Alba.
Nicola’s double standards with football breaches of covid rules.
The latest example of Nicola’s hypocrisy has been her kid-gloves treatment of the supporters of The Rangers’ football club whose behaviour has been nothing short of criminal. Of course there are perfectly decent fans of this club, but on two separate occasions thousands flouted the Cv19 quarantine laws by gathering in large mobs and more seriously they have spewed out anti-Irish racist and anti-RC bile while marching en masse to George Square in Glasgow and assaulting members of the public and the police while rioting in the city centre.
The first occasion followed their home game against St Mirren on 6th March when they clinched the League championship and the second time was after their final home game of the season on Saturday 15th May.
After the St Mirren game the players and manager of Rangers encouraged the fans to celebrate from the gates and windows of Ibrox park in total disregard for the breach of Cv19 laws this involved. This was widely known at the time as video of it went viral. Nicola said nothing about this.
After the Aberdeen game the players, manager and others celebrated in a bar within Ibrox including singing songs with sectarian add-ons, although Nicola tersely condemned the city outrages she was again was struck dumb by the actions of the The Rangers staff.
When one considers how scathing Nicola was when Aberdeen players broke the Cv19 rules by visiting a bar in the city and when one of Celtic’s players went to Spain for a weekend it is rank hypocrisy on her part. The woman is a phony who views football through Royal Blue tinted lenses.
Another example of Nicola’s double standards is exemplified by her obsessive interest in defending anonymous victims of online transphobia, while ignoring real victims of hateful and threatening Tweets/e-mails by transgender activists, such as that suffered by brave lesbian MP Joanna Cherry.
The former, undocumented, unsubstantiated allegations compelled Nicola to drag herself away from “the fight against Covid” to compile a cringeworthy video of concern for the transgender people who had supposedly left the SNP, while the latter, real and well documented hate crime elicited not a word of support.
As in Alec Salmond’s acquittal, Nicola was struck dumb when confronted with proven facts, but vociferous on tittle-tattle.
Post Script.
Although bitterly disappointed by the certainty that I will continue to be one of Her Majesty’s subjects for the rest of my days and will never see an independent Scotland, I take some comfort from the fact that I saw through the charlatan that is Nicola soon enough to allow me, in 2017, to obtain Irish citizenship by virtue of my grandfather’s nationality. So I will die a citizen of one independent country, but not the one I once believed that Nicola would lead me to.
