Ukraine-Russia War: Nicola Sturgeon's lofty pronouncements on this crisis are just naive – John McLellan

As the nation’s mammy, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was widely praised for her handling of the Covid pandemic, capturing the sombre tone of the moment in daily broadcasts as the death toll started to mount in March and April 2020 and, as we know, ultimately being rewarded with a big win in last year’s Scottish Parliament elections.

Nicola Sturgeon meets members of Scotland's Ukrainian community (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Tone is all very well, actions another, and while SNP supporters will make the unfalsifiable argument that the crisis would have been better handled had Scotland been independent, what cannot be denied is that the tools to manage the crisis came from the UK Government, be it the financing of furlough and other business and employment protection schemes or the vaccine roll-out.

Deftly waiting for UK Government announcements, the Scottish Government added a tartan spin and twist to what was essentially the same approach. So despite criticism of the UK Government’s lifting of all restrictions in England last month, the Scottish Government will do the same in a fortnight.

With Ms Sturgeon’s approval ratings still in a different league to that of Boris Johnson, there is no point in arguing about their relative popularity, but it is worthwhile examining of what the Scottish public so overwhelmingly approves. Cometh the moment cometh the woman, and perhaps the first year of the pandemic was her moment, but now the moment is the Ukraine War.

When even the Ukrainian ambassador’s wife struggles to get a visa, the UK Government’s mishandling of the refugee crisis is beyond question.

It has been an embarrassing shambles and not even the Conservative Home grassroots website has said otherwise. With the vast majority of those seeking sanctuary being women, children and the elderly, there should have been no hesitation in sweeping away barriers delaying entry for those wishing to join friends and relatives.

Whether it’s the Home Office’s inflexible bureaucracy or negative culture, or any incompetence by Home Secretary Priti Patel, the pictures of a pregnant woman being stretchered away from the devastated Mariupol hospital said more than any words that the UK Government needed to act.

It was also tailor-made for Ms Sturgeon to lambast the “unconscionable and indefensible” situation, and to announce a joint approach with the Scottish Refugee Council and local authorities to present a plan to the Home Office, which is the right thing to do.

What the plan contains we are yet to see, but she was still able to spare time this week to re-emphasise her intention, in the middle of a new global crisis, to stage an independence referendum next year.

Why it was wrong to continue constitutional wrangling during one global crisis, but right to revive it during the next is anyone’s guess, but sounding like a Miss World contestant, she argued an independent Scotland would “play a bigger role, albeit as a small country, in building a more peaceful world”.

Apart from welcoming refugees, it is therefore reasonable to ask what sort of contribution an independent Scotland led by Ms Sturgeon would make to such a lofty goal and two further statements were insightful.

Firstly, she told ITV Border that a Nato-imposed no-fly zone over Ukraine should still be considered, despite the clear warning from senior military officers of the risk of sparking full-scale European war.

But claiming nuclear weapons were only deterring direct Western military intervention must be the first time a political leader has argued for unilateral nuclear disarmament to make conventional war easier, as if spreading what we are seeing in Kharkiv and Mariupol to the Baltic states or eastern Poland would be any less devastating for the civilians under attack because Nato had abandoned its nuclear shield.

Twenty million Russians, nine million Germans and five million Poles died in the Second World War, with the European conflict fought entirely with conventional weapons, so it’s hard to see how an ‘if it wasn’t for nukes we could smash the nuclear-armed Russian army controlled by a paranoid, tyrannical psychopath’ approach would advance the cause of world peace.

Secondly, under normal circumstances, she would describe herself as a pacifist so might be expected to do everything in her power to bolster non-military means to end the conflict, the purpose of the economic war now being waged.

As Russian finances are frozen and western businesses withdraw, the next task is to destroy Russia’s oil-and-gas trade and that should mean every country doing their bit to end dependence on its fuel as quickly as possible, especially as the Opec cartel is so far refusing to increase output to keep prices down.

Doing your bit should mean maximising production, yet Ms Sturgeon is still against further exploitation in the North Sea because of the climate emergency, using the startlingly selfish argument that the UK doesn’t import much Russian fuel anyway and the feeble argument that it might take too long, as if the Ukraine War will be over in a month or two.

This conflict could match the Soviet Afghan occupation and Yugoslav Wars for length and brutality, so both short and long-term tactics are required for the overall strategy of achieving a lasting peace, yet it appears there are limits to Ms Sturgeon’s willingness to do what it takes.

For all the Ukraine centre visits and posing in front of the yellow-and-blue flag, it looks like zero-carbon has priority over peace.

Scotland won’t be able to take enough refugees to solve the crisis, but will do what it can, so it should play its part in tackling the fuel crisis, now seeing petrol hit £2 a litre.

If Ms Sturgeon is to be believed, it can only be tackled by the UK Chancellor spending more money in benefits and tax cuts, not by the Scottish Government stepping up to the platform. Thank goodness, as her Westminster leader Ian Blackford has said, there will be no independence referendum next year.

World peace might have to wait.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.