Nicola Sturgeon’s latest hurrah only condemns her and the SNP - Brian Monteith

We should be used to tragedy, comedy, hedonism and arrogance being on show at Edinburgh’s International Festival of the Arts but last week was the first time a former first minister managed to provide all of it personally and then receive almost unanimous raspberries from the critics.

Yet that is indeed what happened when details of Nicola Sturgeon’s high living on the taxpayer’s credit card hit the media just days before she took to the stage for a softball interview and it was revealed she had signed a book deal that would reveal her biggest regrets.

Like Eligma Narcissus, Nicola Sturgeon is our own narcisstic behemoth drawn to the flame of publicity, unable to resist taking part in the festival fringe if only to give pat answers to pat questions from interviewer Iain Dale. The politically knowledgeable Andrew Neil or frank interrogator Piers Morgan he was not.

Really, what can Miss Sturgeon’s memoirs tell us that we do not know already – and more importantly, might we believe any of it?

For many potential readers establishing the truth behind her epic falling-out with Alex Salmond – the man who saved her from defeat by Roseanna Cunningham in the SNP’s 2004 leadership election and made her what she became – might be worth the purchase price. But wait, her memory of events around Alex Salmond’s failed prosecution are riddled with woodworm. On no less than 50 Sturgeon said, “I don't know,” “I’m not aware,” “I can’t remember” or “my memory is vague” when a Holyrood’s Parliamentary inquiry grilled her for over eight hours.

If Ms Sturgeon were to suddenly dredge up memories she previously denied having or provided narratives that could have aided the inquiry would she not now be acting in contempt of Parliament? Will Nicola Sturgeon reveal regrets about how she cut back on nurse teaching places so Scotland’s NHS had to rely so heavily on wildly more expensive bank nurses? Will she apologise for continuing to discharge elderly patients from hospitals to nursing homes without testing for Covid-19 (or even after they had tested positive) well after the appalling practice had been stopped in England?

Will she regret presiding over her administration’s continued cuts in drug rehab places while drug-related deaths in Scotland grew to the highest in Europe? Will she apologise for pressing ahead with the minimum unit of alcohol pricing when warned it would not work – yet we now see alcohol deaths are at their highest for a decade and the heaviest drinkers are drinking more?

Will she now accept it was wrong to bodyswerve the service of reconciliation held at St Giles Kirk after the independence referendum – choosing instead to stoke the fires of division by campaigning actively for another referendum rather than respect the Edinburgh Agreement she signed?

Will she regret as leader allowing her 35 MPs to abstain from Westminster’s motion that could have kept the whole UK in the EU’s Customs Union – but was lost by only six votes? Does she not think now that avoiding the Northern Ireland Protocol that has punished Scottish businesses exporting to Northern Ireland, or the introduction of EU customs checks she so often railed against, would have been better than trying to confect as hard a Brexit as possible to help build a grievance to justify a second indyref?

Will Ms Sturgeon’s memoirs admit what even her successor “continuity” Humza Yousaf has been forced to accept – that independence is further away than at any time since the referendum? Further, that EU membership for Scotland, as reported by the Scotsman, would likely take eight years to negotiate and comply with requirements such as a central bank, a separate currency and border enforcement, must – when adding the time to achieve an indyref, win that vote and then negotiate a Scexit – must be at least 15-20 years from delivering?

The annoying and distasteful truth (for it displayed a contempt for and arrogance towards the Scottish public) is Nicola Sturgeon’s time in power was always about the performance not the outcomes, about how she looked or sounded, not what she delivered. Establishing just how much she lived on the hog at taxpayers’ expense tells us not just how important her high heels were to her, but how potentially dangerous they were too, for the taxpayer was charged for non-slip grips to prevent her from the ignominy of keeling over.

Politicians often look to deceive who they are to win over the public. Prime minister Harold Wilson could be forever seen sucking a pipe; it gave him a thoughtful look and common touch. Yet in private Wilson actually favoured cigars, but reasoned he could not afford to be stigmatised as Churchillian or a Tory.

Sturgeon, at less than 5ft 3in – three inches shorter than Napoleon Bonaparte – needed her non-slip power stilts to measure up to the other leaders she was either shooting selfies with or dismissing as political eunuchs. Likewise she adopted Thatcheresque power suits (some practically mannequin copies) to encourage us to take her seriously. Fair enough, but Thatcher never used the taxpayers’ credit card for fashion accessories.

Yoga classes, airport VIP lounges, attending conferences she was not invited to – did Ms Sturgeon ever use her First Minister’s salary?

I shan’t be buying any Sturgeon memoir; I would not dream of rewarding the author or the publishers. Instead, I shall be content to read Ian Mitchell’s next volume of his unofficial biography, which together with Tom Gallagher’s Sturgeon chapter in his book “Europe’s Leadership Famine” provide a far more disinterested and balanced take.