Nicola Sturgeon has never bothered to hide the contempt in which she holds the Conservative Party. And why should she? That’s business, after all. But tormenting the Labour Party? Now, that’s pleasure.
Like a Caledonian Cato, Ms Sturgeon never wavers: Labour delenda est. The Tories are just the opposition, but Labour is the enemy and Scotland cannot be reborn, far less be free, until the last Labour politician is strangled with the last copy of the Daily Record. Only then will the field be clear for the final battle that pits the SNP against the Conservatives.
All of which is a way of explaining how Nikileaks dominated first minister’s questions yesterday. Ms Sturgeon’s revelation that, in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, Kezia Dugdale had privately suggested the Labour Party might recant its opposition to a second independence referendum might just have been the first — and alas, only — truly new development in this long election campaign. The Tories could scarcely contain their glee at this development.
Like a cat toying with a small rodent, Ms Sturgeon allowed that Ms Dugdale was within her rights to change her mind but not to suggest that people who still believe there should be another independence referendum “are somehow expressing something unacceptable”. And anyway, she didn’t start it because it was Kezia Dugdale who first betrayed the confidentiality of this notionally private conversation. She did so, dear reader, in the best place possible for such indiscretions: the pages of The Times. The Labour leader just left out the bit about supporting indyref2.
If Labour Unionists want to draw their own conclusions from this and switch their support to the Conservatives, she implied, then, well, so be it. Not my problem, love. And anyway, she said, smiling a smile of feline acidity, “if people want rid of the Tories in Scotland and if they want MPs elected who agree with Jeremy Corbyn on more issues than Kezia Dugdale does, they should vote for the SNP.”
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For her part, Ms Dugdale bore the look of a labrador nursing a secret sorrow. Rallying herself, she gamely insisted that “the first minister will say anything to deflect from the SNP’s appalling record in office” but “people across the country want the first minister to focus on the day job”. When Ms Sturgeon suggested that Scotland enjoys a sufficiency of nurses and midwives, Ms Dugdale said that it was another “fib” told by the first minister. Ken McIntosh, the presiding officer, was appalled. He urged members to be courteous to one another. Just imagine.