Euan McColm: Nicola Sturgeon’s knack keeps both sides on message

If you thought Nicola Sturgeon had appealed for calm after Brexit, that’s not what her supporters heard, writes Euan McColm.

Nicola Sturgeon quoted Nelson Mandela in her speech on Friday to underline Scots sense of grievance. Picture: Andy Buchanan/Getty

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon possesses an ability for which other political leaders would sell their souls. She has the power to tell her party members one thing and for them to hear another.

We’ve witnessed this happen, time and again, in recent years. Whenever Sturgeon has raised the subject of independence, she has left SNP members convinced they’ve heard the repetition of a promise to hold a second referendum in the immediate future.

But those listening closely will have heard the First Minister say something different. Sturgeon’s speeches on the matter are full of shoulds and my intentionses, qualifiers that loosen the wheels on her wagon.

In a speech delivered to SNP members on Friday, Sturgeon really went for it when it came to the constitutional shake-up that she predicts is imminent.

Quoting the late Nelson Mandela, Sturgeon said: “It always seems impossible until it is done.” She believed that, in Scotland, we are on the cusp of such a moment. Whether the battle to end apartheid in South Africa and the fight for Scottish independence are analogous is one to wrestle with. Doubtless, many Yes campaigners see their cause as a righteous crusade to overthrow Scotland’s oppressors. Others may think the First Minister might want to get a grip.

Anyway, the Sturgeon speech, her reaction to the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, was full of red meat for the nationalists. There was the usual stuff – which has so far failed to shift polls in favour of the independence movement – about Scotland being dragged out of the EU, and there was a flirtation, too, with the question of the Scottish Government holding a consultative vote if the UK government continues to reject the nationalists’ request to have the power to hold a referendum transferred to Edinburgh.

Sturgeon was not wildly enthusiastic about the idea but many of those in the audience, including a number of elected members, think the First Minister should push ahead with a referendum and let the government at Westminster try to stop her. They will have heard Sturgeon say she was not ruling out testing the Scottish Government’s ability to hold its own referendum and been satisfied that the possibility of radical action was real and present.

When she succeeded Alex Salmond in 2014, Sturgeon pledged to be a First Minister for all Scots, regardless of how they had voted in the independence referendum.

But her talk of uniting Scotland didn’t last long as the SNP membership soared and she came under intense pressure from all those new activists to hold a second referendum as soon as possible.

Since then, Sturgeon has engaged in a relentless process of marching her troops halfway up the hill and then back down again and then back up and then back down. She dangles in front of the SNP membership an indyref2 that she is unable to deliver and tells Scots we yearn to put right the mistake of 2014.

But, despite the First Minister’s insistence that the Yes movement is moving forward with growing momentum, polls stubbornly refuse to shift in the nationalists’ favour.

Sturgeon’s crystal ball told her that various political outcomes would boost the independence cause. The return of a majority Tory government at Westminster in 2015 was supposed to do it; victory for the Leave campaign in the following year’s EU referendum was supposed to do it; and the elevation to Prime Minister of Boris Johnson was supposed to do it. None of these things appears to have done it.

Though more excitable nationalists will have heard Sturgeon refuse to rule out a referendum held without the permission of the UK government, others will have heard a different speech. They’ll have heard Sturgeon call for a calm and level-headed approach; they’ll have heard her say there is no shortcut to independence and that victory for the Yes campaign in any future referendum was dependent on a number of Scots changing their minds on the constitutional question.

I wonder for how much longer Sturgeon believes she can continue to face both ways on the matter of another independence referendum? Her current strategy of ratcheting up expectations among supporters and then immediately letting them down is becoming positively sadomasochistic. Surely someone’s going to shout the safe word.

Sturgeon looks like a politician who has run out of ideas. She might say she understands the need to win the confidence of pro-UK voters but she shows no inclination towards shifting the political agenda on to the domestic matters that these voters prioritise.

Perhaps unwilling to invite real scrutiny from those voters, Sturgeon gives all of her attention to those already persuaded by the arguments for independence. How this approach is expected to increase support for the breaks-up of the UK is anybody’s guess.

Sturgeon’s speech on Friday was supposed to be a reflection on Brexit but it was no such thing. No matter how the UK had voted in 2016, the SNP would always have argued in favour of independence, Of course, Sturgeon was going to say that Brexit enhanced the case for independence. There has been no reflection on Brexit beyond the wording of arguments about how it impacts on the case for independence.

Here, I think, the First Minister will find herself truly out of step with many Scottish voters. Only a minority of Scots wanted Brexit but that doesn’t mean the majority will think the answer to this outcome lies in more constitutional uncertainty.

There are those within the SNP who would have liked the First Minister to have used her speech on Friday to apply the brakes on the independence charabanc. They’d have liked to hear her talk about the need to see the lie of the post-Brexit land before making a fresh case for independence.

Instead, we got more of the usual preaching to the converted that we’ve been hearing for more than five years.

Sturgeon’s big speech on Brexit told enthusiastic nationalists that independence was imminent, it told gradualists that independence was a time away. And it told the rest of us that the First Minister is running low on ideas for shifting opinion in favour of the break-up of the UK.