Sarah Smith: Nicola Sturgeon has form for remaining silent when she should speak out - Euan McColm

The relentless misogynistic abuse endured by journalist Sarah Smith while she was Scotland Editor of BBC News was absolutely horrific.

Smith - appointed as the corporation’s North America correspondent last November - has told of sickening abuse hurled at her by members of the public during the six years she spent covering the country of her birth.

Her account is disturbing but, to anyone who has paid the slightest attention to our political debate over recent years, won’t have been the slightest bit surprising. When Smith tells us that once someone rolled down a car window and asked “what f***ing lies are you going to be telling on TV tonight you f***ing lying bitch?” doesn’t her story ring with miserable truth?

BBC presenter Sarah Smith. Picture: Press Association

SNP MSP James Dornan - an idiot, to be fair - Tweeted that Smith’s experiences were “imaginary” before clarifying that he meant “exaggerated”. Eventually, he offered a pitiful apology “for my earlier comments that made it seem as though I believed the abuse Sarah Smith has suffered was imaginary”. I mean, it seemed as though he believed it because he said it but let’s not quibble.

Two days after Smith’s comments, contained in an academic report, were reported, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon finally spoke up. Better late than never, I suppose.

Sturgeon condemned “unreservedly” the abuse that had come from anyone who shared her political leanings. And then she started to squirm.

The First Minister wasn’t going to name any names but she had seen comments from other elected politicians almost suggesting she was somehow responsible for the unacceptable abuses Sarah Smith had suffered. Yes, said Sturgeon, she had a responsibility to call out abusive behaviour but instead of opposition politicians saying it was her fault, they should come together to marginalise and force this sort of behaviour out of politics, altogether.

Was this a noble call for unity or an attempt to distract from the fact that this is, I’m afraid, a particular problem for the SNP and the wider Yes movement.

Back in 2014, during the independence referendum campaign, a central plank of the SNP’s strategy was to undermine the credibility of the BBC. Then First Minister Alex Salmond was relentless in his attacks on the corporation and its journalists.

Sturgeon bit her tongue when Yes campaigners picketed BBC headquarters, hurling abuse at staff. She was absolutely complicit in efforts to rubbish the BBC.

Whenever the corporation covered a problematic issue for the Yes campaign - its incoherent positions on currency and borders for example - it was easier to attack the messenger that to engage with the substance.

There are two versions of events in 2014. Listen to Salmond, Sturgeon or any number of Yes campaigners and the independence referendum campaign was a joyous celebration of democracy. Others recall things differently.

They recall angry nationalist crowds screaming abuse at unionist campaigners such as Jim Murphy and Alistair Darling. Lines previously spouted by Salmond and Sturgeon about Labour being simply “red Tories” were regurgitated by mobs determined to silence their opponents. They recall journalists being abused by party members at SNP press conferences while Salmond continued to attack their integrity. And they recall the screeching fury chimps of the internet who shared preposterous conspiracy theories about secret oilfields.

The SNP, under the leadership team of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, has done more than any other party to coarsens our debate. Of course, there are many examples of appalling behaviour by supporters of the Union but the anger which characterises so much of our debate was generated by the SNP which understands full and well that anger fuels nationalism.

I do not recall Salmond or Sturgeon being intimidated and hustled on the streets during 2014. That was something for their opponents to endure.

It is notable that it took two days and a question from a journalist for the First Minister to speak up. Surely, if this were an issue of serious concern to her, she should have reacted immediately? The time to offer support to Smith and to condemn her abusers was the very moment Sturgeon learned about the situation.

The First Minister has form for remaining silent when she should speak out. Take the case of the writer and philanthropist, JK Rowling, who has endured relentless online abuse over her views on the importance of single-sex spaces for women. Now, much of that abuse comes from beyond these shores but it is a reaction to Rowling’s concerns about the Scottish Government’s proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act and I think that more than warrants an intervention from the First Minister. Sturgeon and Rowling might disagree on the matter of who should be able to access single-sex spaces but surely the First Minister could find a moment to ask those attacking the writer to stop or, at the very least, to issue a statement of solidarity with a public figure who has, over more than two decades, used her fortune to benefit countless charitable causes.

Some in the SNP note that Sturgeon has been similarly reticent when it comes to speaking out on the bullying of her party’s MP for Edinburgh South West, Joanna Cherry, whose opposition to the Scottish Government’s position on gender recognition has led to her suffering a horrendous campaign of online abuse and threats.

Cherry and Sturgeon don’t enjoy a warm relationship in that they have no relationship at all but, nonetheless, says one SNP campaigner, the First Minister should have thrown her arm around Cherry’s shoulder when the abuse started instead of looking the other way as if nothing was going on.

It is almost 15 years since the SNP enjoyed its first Holyrood victory. Since then, the party’s electoral dominance has grown.

Throughout that decade and a half, Nicola Sturgeon has done more than most to set the tone of our politics.