'The world is my oyster': Nicola Sturgeon on feminism, her last push for independence and life after
(fascinating read)
‘The world is my oyster’: Nicola Sturgeon on feminism, her last push for independence and life after politics
Libby Brooks
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Nicola Sturgeon, photographed in Bute House, Edinburgh, last month. Photograph: Manuel Vazquez/The Guardian
Scotland’s first minister is one of the most capable, if divisive, politicians of her era. Could her record-breaking reign conclude with the end of the union?
Nicola Sturgeon won’t take “no” for an answer. Standing at one end of the long table in the cabinet room at her official Edinburgh residence, Bute House, her white suit jacket is reflected in the glossy mahogany. Sturgeon is convinced that the final scene of Dirty Dancing includes a moment when Patrick Swayze leaps on to a table just like this. Two young women on her political staff disagree: Swayze was dancing down the aisle, they insist – correctly. How can she not remember this; how many times has she watched it? It’s the first rule of Scottish interaction that the more you like a person, the more you take the piss out of them. Perhaps it is the sunny afternoon or the slightly less punishing schedule of Holyrood in recess but, for now at least, Scotland’s longest-serving first minister is in a playful mood.
We are meeting two weeks after Sturgeon named the date for a second Scottish independence referendum as 19 October 2023, and revealed her plans to take the fight to the UK’s supreme court by asking judges to rule on the legality of holding the vote without Westminster’s permission. Earlier in the day, she held a press conference in the elegant first-floor drawing room, to launch the second in a series of Scottish government papers making the case for independence. Poised at the podium beneath a portrait of Robert Burns, she was on ebullient form as she condemned the Tory leadership contest’s “wholly manufactured culture war” and accused Keir Starmer of giving “the proverbial two fingers to Scotland”, an uncharacteristically coarse jibe for the usually lawyerly Sturgeon.
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So, how likely is another referendum, given the significant doubts that any of the three routes she proposed will actually deliver. It’s a path “not without hurdles along the way”, she says with some understatement. The UK government has consistently refused plan A, the section 30 order that would grant Holyrood the powers to hold a legal vote, while constitutional experts are sceptical about plan B; that the supreme court will rule a referendum is legal without Westminster’s approval. Is there time to fit all the moving parts, including Holyrood legislation and an expected 16-week campaign period, before the set date of October 2023? Sturgeon is sanguine: “Assuming there is a judgment round about the turn of the year, then we will be able to take legislation through on a timescale for [a vote on] 19 October.” Meanwhile, her plan C if all other routes are exhausted, to fight the next general election on the question of independence alone – a “de facto referendum” – is already mired in procedural confusion: would success mean a majority of votes just for the SNP, or would other pro-independence parties count towards the tally? How can one party dictate the terms of an election? And so forth.
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Before she leaves, I return to the question of her future. When Sturgeon talked about fostering last October, it was the first signal that her mind was on life beyond Holyrood. “I am not about to quit the stage,” she says evenly, and whether she stands at the next election is a judgment she will make closer to the time. “But I look forward to the opportunity to do other interesting things after politics.” It is telling that she doesn’t resort to a politician’s answer here, insisting that by then she will be negotiating the terms of the breakup of the UK having won the second independence referendum. And what it tells you depends on where you stand on Sturgeon. Is it proof that her heart’s not really in her plan for another vote, that she doesn’t believe it will happen or that she can win it? Or is it a refreshingly realistic response from a woman who is, just maybe, done with worrying about how anyone else interprets her? Her – stated at least – refusal to cling to office is a marked contrast to the likes of Tony Blair or Boris Johnson.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/13/nicola-sturgeon-feminism-independence-life-after-politics