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Nicola Sturgeon to resign as Scotland's first minister

39 points by mellosouls 4y ago

mellosouls 4y ago
As an Englishman, I've been impressed with how mature and competent the Scottish leaders have seemed in comparison with their English counterparts; I don't know if it's a systemic or cultural thing (or just my imagination), but as a representative of that tendency I'm sad to see her go.
- mamonster 4y ago
  To be honest, in comparison to the last 5 years of the Tory part, Sturgeon is quite competent. The only proper scandal I remember is the Salmond case, and then in terms of being incompetent the only thing which is undisputable is how badly she has handled the Scottish drug policy/crisis.
  - mellosouls 4y ago
    Ironically, I was always very impressed with Salmond as well, he seemed to be on a different level, wit and intelligence wise to his English colleagues. It all obviously got a bit grimy with him and Sturgeon at the end, so I didn't mention it. There has also been the recent trans policy heat (not to say she is on the wrong side, I have no idea) and the finance debacle that Private Eye has been tracking. So yes, they are hardly pure, but just seem generally more professional and trustworthy.
    - bbg2401 4y ago
      With regards to Scottish politics and its politicians, I suspect you are allowing yourself to bathe in the rays of your own ignorance.
      - mellosouls 4y ago
        Ha, well I did have the misfortune the other day to stumble on to a piece in The National and was depressed at the blatant anti-Englishness, especially in the toxic comments, which would have been condemned as racism with any other target or in any other mainstream publication.
        inglor_cz 4y ago
        As an occassional reader of Scottish discussions as well, the double standards are striking. Compared to those discussions and their anti-English tenor, "the unmentionable" Tommy Robinson was a positively mild and mellow-tempered critic of Islam. I get why Ukrainians hate Russians; but there is nowhere near as much real blood between the English and the Scots. There shouldn't be that much hate, unless deliberately stoked.
    - LemmyInThePub 4y ago
      [dead]
  - LemmyInThePub 4y ago
    [dead]
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    You don't remember any except the salmond case because the left wing media treat the SNP very softly. There were lots of scandals during her time, e.g. the ferries disaster, the current gender self id / rapist case, the missing 660k, her regular faked inability to recall critical facts when questioned about things, breaking her own mask mandate, threatening to prosecute MSPs if they spoke against Sturgeon, the attempt to take complete power over from the Scottish Parliament via a pandemic law etc.
- tjpnz 4y ago
  I do wonder how much of that could be put down to how fantastically incompetent their English counterparts are.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  My hobby horse is more representative voting systems and the one in place in Scotland encourages people to aim for broad suppport rather than be loved and hated by a minority.
  - chkaloon 4y ago
    How does it do that? Some sort of ranked choice?
    - pringk02 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system It's a hybrid first past the post and propertional system. Not perfect, but what voting system is?
      - throw_pm23 4y ago
        > Not perfect, but what voting system is? None: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  Sturgeon was competent at enforcing party unity and winning Scottish elections. But in terms of actually achieving things for Scotland, both her and the SNP have failed. It's a one issue party so in terms of independence: - Support for independence is now lower than when she took the reigns. That by itself must count as failure on the SNP's own terms. - Lost the "once in a generation" referendum and then refused to accept the result, campaigning for years for a second referendum she had already agreed wouldn't happen. - Made zero progress on reducing subsidy dependency on England, creating the widespread impression that the SNP doesn't really want Scotland to be independent. Many other specific issues around independence also have been ignored despite the lack of answers being one of the issues causing their referendum loss. - Done everything possible to piss off the neighbours across the border, like encouraging anti-English rhetoric that would be considered grotesquely racist if there was a skin color difference. And in non-referendum areas: - Poverty and poor health are worse in Scotland than England. - She said she wanted to be judged on closing education gaps, but they didn't close. - The economy is worse. - Social policy is totally reactive. Under Sturgeon the SNP just tended to copy whatever England was doing but making it more extreme, without any obvious guiding principles. The gender self-ID fiasco is a good example of that. 2/3rds of voters are against it and Salmond says it's done more damage to the independence campaign than anything else (which says a lot about the strength of that campaign). She didn't think through the consequences and when faced with the reality of what it means in the Isla Bryson case, flailed around and couldn't articulate a coherent response. Total incompetence. - Scotland has quietly developed a reputation for corruption and weak institutions, with problems you don't see elsewhere in the country. The nasty Salmond/Sturgeon affair was one example, and her resignation is likely triggered by the police finally starting to investigate where £600,000 of donated money was apparently embezzled to. The way she "can't recall" that her husband lent over £100,000 to the SNP is another symptom of this sort of thing.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    > - Lost the "once in a generation" referendum and then refused to accept the result, campaigning for years for a second referendum she had already agreed wouldn't happen. Many voted no to remain in the EU, only to have the rug pulled out from under them anyway. That surely justifies a redo.
- Gortal278 4y ago
  It's mostly just good PR. Overall the SNP have pushed Scotland down the rankings in pretty much every measurable metric that matters.
neom 4y ago
Last of my "4 Favs" is gone, shame. May, Merkel, Ardern and Sturgeon.
- mellosouls 4y ago
  I agree that women have seemed relatively impressive at the top when they have stuck compared to their male counterparts; again, I don't know if that is coincidental, or representative of something we should learn from.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dbspin 4y ago
    Theresa May is certainly the exception on that list. She's widely regarded (next to Liz Truss) as one of the most ineffectual Prime Ministers of the last fifty years.
    - lucideer 4y ago
      As terrible as May was, it does seem that a lot of the derision toward her is rooted in either scapegoating (from the Conservative side) or - more commonly - misogyny (from all sides). She certainly was not competent, and did a lot of damage, but she doesn't compare to the incompetence of either her predecessor or successor. It's also worth noting that she was handed a poison chalice: the Brexit mandate, which she had been opposed to during the original referendum, and subsequently blamed for every predictable misstep in implementation (mostly by Johnson, who had shied away from the leadership role in the immediate wake of the referendum, despite being an instigator). Either way you look at it, she was saddled with a lot of blame for problems that predated her office.
      - dbspin 4y ago
        I think the disdain for her was less misogyny (the ghost of Margaret Thatcher still excites the conservatives in a way only directly comparable to the Republican worship of Regan) and more her utter unlikability. A politician can be unlikable and effective, or likeable and ineffective. Once in a very great while they combine efficacy and electability. But to combine such utter ineffectuality with a total lack of charisma is to ensure destain. But I agree, she didn't create the environment that led to Brexit like Cameron, nor did she help push it through like Johnson. Whatever her legacy, it's as nothing next to theirs.
heywherelogingo 4y ago
Scotland's been losing its way - things can only improve.
- 0xAFFFF 4y ago
  How so?
esja 4y ago
The prison issue wasn't the only straw but I believe it was the last one. It wasn't just that her government tried to put a male rapist in a female prison, after ignoring years of warnings that self-id would cause this to happen. It was that when questioned, she repeatedly demonstrated that she was either unable or unwilling to grasp the logic of the situation and address the mistake with integrity. Instead she continued trying to square the circle.

39 points by mellosouls 4y ago

As an Englishman, I've been impressed with how mature and competent the Scottish leaders have seemed in comparison with their English counterparts; I don't know if it's a systemic or cultural thing (or just my imagination), but as a representative of that tendency I'm sad to see her go.

mamonster 4y ago
To be honest, in comparison to the last 5 years of the Tory part, Sturgeon is quite competent. The only proper scandal I remember is the Salmond case, and then in terms of being incompetent the only thing which is undisputable is how badly she has handled the Scottish drug policy/crisis.
- mellosouls 4y ago
  Ironically, I was always very impressed with Salmond as well, he seemed to be on a different level, wit and intelligence wise to his English colleagues. It all obviously got a bit grimy with him and Sturgeon at the end, so I didn't mention it. There has also been the recent trans policy heat (not to say she is on the wrong side, I have no idea) and the finance debacle that Private Eye has been tracking. So yes, they are hardly pure, but just seem generally more professional and trustworthy.
  - bbg2401 4y ago
    With regards to Scottish politics and its politicians, I suspect you are allowing yourself to bathe in the rays of your own ignorance.
    - mellosouls 4y ago
      Ha, well I did have the misfortune the other day to stumble on to a piece in The National and was depressed at the blatant anti-Englishness, especially in the toxic comments, which would have been condemned as racism with any other target or in any other mainstream publication.
      - inglor_cz 4y ago
        As an occassional reader of Scottish discussions as well, the double standards are striking. Compared to those discussions and their anti-English tenor, "the unmentionable" Tommy Robinson was a positively mild and mellow-tempered critic of Islam. I get why Ukrainians hate Russians; but there is nowhere near as much real blood between the English and the Scots. There shouldn't be that much hate, unless deliberately stoked.
  - LemmyInThePub 4y ago
    [dead]
- LemmyInThePub 4y ago
  [dead]
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  You don't remember any except the salmond case because the left wing media treat the SNP very softly. There were lots of scandals during her time, e.g. the ferries disaster, the current gender self id / rapist case, the missing 660k, her regular faked inability to recall critical facts when questioned about things, breaking her own mask mandate, threatening to prosecute MSPs if they spoke against Sturgeon, the attempt to take complete power over from the Scottish Parliament via a pandemic law etc.
tjpnz 4y ago
I do wonder how much of that could be put down to how fantastically incompetent their English counterparts are.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
My hobby horse is more representative voting systems and the one in place in Scotland encourages people to aim for broad suppport rather than be loved and hated by a minority.
- chkaloon 4y ago
  How does it do that? Some sort of ranked choice?
  - pringk02 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_member_system It's a hybrid first past the post and propertional system. Not perfect, but what voting system is?
    - throw_pm23 4y ago
      > Not perfect, but what voting system is? None: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
fidgewidge 4y ago
Sturgeon was competent at enforcing party unity and winning Scottish elections. But in terms of actually achieving things for Scotland, both her and the SNP have failed. It's a one issue party so in terms of independence: - Support for independence is now lower than when she took the reigns. That by itself must count as failure on the SNP's own terms. - Lost the "once in a generation" referendum and then refused to accept the result, campaigning for years for a second referendum she had already agreed wouldn't happen. - Made zero progress on reducing subsidy dependency on England, creating the widespread impression that the SNP doesn't really want Scotland to be independent. Many other specific issues around independence also have been ignored despite the lack of answers being one of the issues causing their referendum loss. - Done everything possible to piss off the neighbours across the border, like encouraging anti-English rhetoric that would be considered grotesquely racist if there was a skin color difference. And in non-referendum areas: - Poverty and poor health are worse in Scotland than England. - She said she wanted to be judged on closing education gaps, but they didn't close. - The economy is worse. - Social policy is totally reactive. Under Sturgeon the SNP just tended to copy whatever England was doing but making it more extreme, without any obvious guiding principles. The gender self-ID fiasco is a good example of that. 2/3rds of voters are against it and Salmond says it's done more damage to the independence campaign than anything else (which says a lot about the strength of that campaign). She didn't think through the consequences and when faced with the reality of what it means in the Isla Bryson case, flailed around and couldn't articulate a coherent response. Total incompetence. - Scotland has quietly developed a reputation for corruption and weak institutions, with problems you don't see elsewhere in the country. The nasty Salmond/Sturgeon affair was one example, and her resignation is likely triggered by the police finally starting to investigate where £600,000 of donated money was apparently embezzled to. The way she "can't recall" that her husband lent over £100,000 to the SNP is another symptom of this sort of thing.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  > - Lost the "once in a generation" referendum and then refused to accept the result, campaigning for years for a second referendum she had already agreed wouldn't happen. Many voted no to remain in the EU, only to have the rug pulled out from under them anyway. That surely justifies a redo.
Gortal278 4y ago
It's mostly just good PR. Overall the SNP have pushed Scotland down the rankings in pretty much every measurable metric that matters.

neom 4y ago

Last of my "4 Favs" is gone, shame. May, Merkel, Ardern and Sturgeon.

mellosouls 4y ago
I agree that women have seemed relatively impressive at the top when they have stuck compared to their male counterparts; again, I don't know if that is coincidental, or representative of something we should learn from.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dbspin 4y ago
  Theresa May is certainly the exception on that list. She's widely regarded (next to Liz Truss) as one of the most ineffectual Prime Ministers of the last fifty years.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    As terrible as May was, it does seem that a lot of the derision toward her is rooted in either scapegoating (from the Conservative side) or - more commonly - misogyny (from all sides). She certainly was not competent, and did a lot of damage, but she doesn't compare to the incompetence of either her predecessor or successor. It's also worth noting that she was handed a poison chalice: the Brexit mandate, which she had been opposed to during the original referendum, and subsequently blamed for every predictable misstep in implementation (mostly by Johnson, who had shied away from the leadership role in the immediate wake of the referendum, despite being an instigator). Either way you look at it, she was saddled with a lot of blame for problems that predated her office.
    - dbspin 4y ago
      I think the disdain for her was less misogyny (the ghost of Margaret Thatcher still excites the conservatives in a way only directly comparable to the Republican worship of Regan) and more her utter unlikability. A politician can be unlikable and effective, or likeable and ineffective. Once in a very great while they combine efficacy and electability. But to combine such utter ineffectuality with a total lack of charisma is to ensure destain. But I agree, she didn't create the environment that led to Brexit like Cameron, nor did she help push it through like Johnson. Whatever her legacy, it's as nothing next to theirs.

heywherelogingo 4y ago

Scotland's been losing its way - things can only improve.

0xAFFFF 4y ago
How so?

esja 4y ago

The prison issue wasn't the only straw but I believe it was the last one. It wasn't just that her government tried to put a male rapist in a female prison, after ignoring years of warnings that self-id would cause this to happen. It was that when questioned, she repeatedly demonstrated that she was either unable or unwilling to grasp the logic of the situation and address the mistake with integrity. Instead she continued trying to square the circle.