The Politicians We Deserve

In an era when many of us are searching for a politician to admire, or at least one who doesn’t make us feel like we’re eating cold custard, Nicola Sturgeon seemed alright.

She didn’t dissemble too much. And if you paid at least some attention, you knew what she thought, whether you agreed or not.

That view seems stronger since she has just admitted she can’t stand the mad house that is UK politics anymore.

In her resignation speech, she said she wasn’t expecting violins, but decried the lack of privacy politics allows, the “physical and mental impact” of her job and the “brutal political culture” in which she swims.

Definitely not playing the violin was Iain Martin at Reaction who called her speech “incoherent, risible, delusional”. Harsh.

Over at The Telegraph, they think the Out of depth Sturgeon has spooked Scotland’s economy.

The Daily Mail hates her, of course, but then she is a woman.

Sturgeon said: “I feel more each day just now that the fixed opinions people increasingly have about me – as I say, some fair, others little more than caricature – are becoming a barrier to reasoned debate.”

It is tempting to blame all this just on the media, but they do sort of reflect the public attitude, which is that they are all the same, all a bunch of cheating charlatans.

The approach is: let’s kick the s**t out of you until better people decide to stand.

That seems unlikely to work, which means we just get the politicians we deserve.

What has Sturgeon’s departure done for her party?

A Find Out Now poll picked up by Politico found that 16% of Scottish voters are now less likely to vote SNP, more telling though is that this figure is 11% for 2019 SNP voters. Asked if the party could survive without her, one MP said: “I doubt it.”

For our own Find Out Now poll this week, we asked whether the public sympathise with politicians who resign because of the stresses of the job, and whether they suspect other factors are at play. 

You can see the full results below.