SNP leadership: Does Nicola Sturgeon deserve credit for eight years of SNP election wins? Don't be silly - Euan McColm

While the candidates to succeed her as First Minister trash the record of her Government, Nicola Sturgeon has been keen to remind us of her great achievements.

Nicola Sturgeon during the press conference where she announced she would stand down as First Minister

The departing SNP leader can’t open her mouth, these days, without telling us about the eight elections she’s won.

Sturgeon trotted out this statistic during her resignation speech and she did so again, during First Minister’s Question Time on Thursday. After Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross quoted Finance Secretary Kate Forbes's brutal attack - made during a televised leadership debate on STV - on the record of Health Secretary Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon declared the only verdict on her government that really mattered was the verdict of the people it served - the people of Scotland. That verdict has been pretty clear, she added, with eight election victories under her leadership.

And it’s impossible to argue with the facts. Sturgeon has led her party through a series of victories in elections to Westminster, Holyrood, and Scotland’s local councils.

However. has she achieved this record because of her gifts as a wise head of government?

Don’t be silly. Nicola Sturgeon led her party to a string of victories despite her lack of delivery. She is not a proven winner because she made Scotland a better place but because she told her followers that any shortcomings were the fault of others. This is how nationalism works.

Almost half of Scottish voters, having been seduced by the story of a Scotland held back by Westminster, have spent the past eight years giving Sturgeon a by on the inadequacies of her administration.

How else are we to explain, for example, the remarkable case of Joe Fitzpatrick, the former public health minister sacked for his inability to get a grip on Scotland’s shocking record-breaking drug deaths who was re-elected in Dundee with the largest majority in Holyrood?

How else are we to make sense of the fact that - after being Scotland worst Transport Minister, Justice Secretary, and Health Secretary - Humza Yousaf is now a serious candidate to become First Minister?

How else are we to square Sturgeon’s electoral success with her demand that voters judge her on her stewardship of Scotland's education system, which remains in crisis?

Nationalism, like any faith, requires adherents to make certain sacrifices. Thus, failing schools and an NHS in crisis may be endured because what really matters is breaking the Union. Anyone who dares suggest that, actually, the Scottish Government could be doing a lot more with the extensive powers at its disposal, is impure. God help the apostate who dares raise a note of doubt.

Sturgeon may comfort herself with the bedtime story that she has spent eight years enjoying the support of “the people of Scotland” but, really, she has used that time to further divide those people and secure her position thanks to the blind faith of a minority.

The SNP leadership contest throws up questions for some of those who have backed Sturgeon over recent years.

Of course, for the unashamed blood-and-soil nationalist, it makes no difference who leads the SNP. To them, England will always be the great enemy and they imagine themselves freedom fighters, driven to liberate their nation. But there are others - the “I’m not a nationalist” nationalists, seduced by romantic talk of a fairer, more compassionate Scotland - who have bought into the idea that Sturgeon is a progressive social democrat rather than a cynical populist.

These voters are blind to the similarities between their political logic and that displayed by Brexiteers. The Eurosceptic’s talk of taking back control is malign and reckless while their identical rhetoric is wise and kind. But both offer simplistic solutions to complex problems; just press this big red button and the future will be bright.

Do any of the candidates to replace Sturgeon sit comfortably in their vision of Scotland’s future?

Would they be able to accommodate the the unabashed blood-and-soil nationalism of Ash Regan? Could they bite their tongues and ignore the strict social conservatism of Kate Forbes? Might they find it in themselves to pretend Humza Yousaf isn’t one of the most incompetent politicians ever to hold ministerial office?

Your classic “I’m not a nationalist” nationalist - basically, a Brexiteer who shops in Fopp - may often be heard declaring that the problem is not the SNP government but the quality of the opposition. If only there was a credible alternative to the nationalists, they’d back them.

Believing there is no alternative to the SNP requires one to ignore the disaster of almost 16 years of nationalist government. Since 2007, the SNP has prioritised constitutional division before everything else. The party has failed to take on essential reform in education and health, presided over catastrophic projects (unfinished ferries, new hospitals riddled with problems), and - under Sturgeon - displayed a reckless lack of interest in supporting business.

Is there really no credible alternative?

I hold no brief for any party (I’ve always been in the business of kicking the shins of whoever holds power) but can anyone really argue that Humza Yousaf is a smarter politician than Labour’s shadow health secretary Jackie Baillie? Can anyone who watches the business of Holyrood truly believe Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville is a more impressive individual than her Labour shadow Michael Marra?

And there are - whisper it - Tory MSPs, too, who make members of the SNP cabinet look even inch the mediocrities there are. Take Murdo Fraser, for example, or the recently elected Russell Findlay. These are serious, credible thinkers whose presence at Holyrood makes laughable the idea that the SNP has all the talent.

As she tours the country for a valedictory round of selfies with voters, Nicola Sturgeon is bound to repeat the story of her electoral successes.

Whether she deserved a single one of them is not at all clear.