Destiny’s child: Interview with Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon

This time last year, Alex Salmond was shuffling his cards, preparing to make the changes to his Cabinet that he believed would ultimately set his government on a steady path towards the referendum.

His fiercely loyal and respected minister for parliamentary business, Bruce Crawford, had had a difficult few months, including the unexpected death of a parent, and so after much soul-searching during the summer recess, had asked to stand down from government. Crawford had been responsible for leading on the referendum negotiations with the UK Government and his departure opened up an opportunity for change.

And while saddened by Crawford’s decision, Salmond used it to put his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, at the forefront of the independence campaign.

It was an opportune but astute move by the First Minister. His deputy already had a formidable reputation at home but had also been very positively exposed to the much wider UK stage in 2009 with her capable handling of the swine-flu outbreak. London broadcasters were falling over themselves in describing her cool, calm and collected manner in the face of a potential national crisis. And the question was being asked, ‘why don’t we have one like her down here?’. This on the back of her two standing ovations from the BMA for her stance against privatisation within the NHS down south which led to one English-based GP asking her to move the Scottish/English border to Trent so that he could become a Scot.

To some extent, she is a perfect foil for her larger-than-life boss, who can sometimes engender a bit of a Marmite reaction. For while Salmond is no doubt a formidable leader, a great strategist and with popularity ratings that most political leaders would bite your right arm off for, she is viewed as more measured, serious and less prone to the odd gaffe – the Hardy to his Laurel, in some respects.

Salmond is also acutely aware that while his popularity remains high, support for him and for independence among women remains relatively low. And Sturgeon can fill that gap. She has a keen sense of social justice and perhaps more emotional intelligence than him, particularly when it comes to dealing with their opponents. It was not always so. She was as rabid an attack dog as any while in opposition but she would credit her time as Scotland’s health secretary, more than any other experience, for shaping her more recent consensual demeanour. She says that having observed, at first hand, professionals within the health service dealing with personal, private and sensitive issues, she learnt that people are more interested in actions and outcomes than they are in the politics.

And it was with that spirit she took on the high octane role of the minister responsible for not only investment and infrastructure but also for the constitution. For a woman that joined the SNP while at school because she believed, ‘heart and soul’, that independence was the only way Scotland could fulfil its potential, this was a dream transfer. And by all accounts when she took the lead in terms of getting the process moving along, her modus operandi was one of being constructive, to the point, and with speed.

Conservative MP and junior Scotland Office minister, David Mundell, who had previously been dealing with Bruce Crawford told Holyrood that there had been a ‘cathartic’ moment when the tone and character of the inter-governmental discussions changed from one of prevarication and “dancing on the head of a pin” to one of consensus and resolution, and that was when Nicola Sturgeon became involved.

Sturgeon is a formidable woman. She is intelligent – a lawyer – a veteran politician while still only in her early 40s and is literally married to the party – her husband of three years is the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell. She joined the SNP at 16 and has grown up in the full glare of the media’s eye, unable to escape the unfortunate and not entirely justified label of being a ‘nippy sweetie’. However, she has a keen sense of humour and with her tongue firmly in her cheek she told delegates at the SNP conference earlier this year that when she had gone in for the first meeting with Mundell, his mobile had rung and it was his mother just checking that he was alright.

As Sturgeon and I sit down towards the end of the parliamentary recess, she giggles at the memory of that first meeting with Mundell and the phone call. She is clearly relaxed after a holiday in the sun in Portugal with Murrell but tells me she is working hard on the White Paper on Independence due to be published later this year – although refuses to confirm a date despite some murmuring that the previously mooted date of November may now be under some doubt. She says it will be a “comprehensive” document despite what her opponents are saying. The last year has clearly been a steep learning curve in terms of her comprehensive new brief and I ask her to describe how it has felt.
“Actually, if I was to describe the last year in one word, it would be fast… very, very fast.”

I wonder how hard it was for her to leave her beloved health brief.

“It’s the First Minister that rightly decides who does what in his government but of course we discussed it and he took my views on board and it’s well understood that I loved being health secretary and for as long as I live, it will have a place in my heart but I had done it for five years and I had thought that was probably the time to move on and allow somebody else to cast a fresh eye over the challenges that the health service faces and will always face so, in truth, it was probably time.

“We were at the start of the long campaign running up to the referendum and I was very keen when Alex suggested it to me to take on the particular role in steering through some of the preparation and particularly those that were still to be agreed around the Edinburgh Agreement which, if you remember, was still to be concluded at that point. I was also keen to play a part – and it is just a part, because the referendum debate will never be down to one person – in making the case, a case, by the way, that I have believed in since I was at school, that Scotland should be independent.

“I think, overwhelmingly, I felt the sense of responsibility going into those first meetings, given the historic nature of it all. The fact is that I think this is the most exciting opportunity the country has ever had and certainly the most exciting opportunity we will ever have, and that moment was not lost on me. However, I think when you are living through periods that others describe as historic and you are up close to it then I think you are less likely to think of the historic significance on a dayto- day basis because you are immersed in the day-to-day work of doing it. There is no doubt at all, though, that this is a hugely privileged position for anybody to be in but particularly for someone that joined the SNP at 16 because she believed in independence for Scotland and believed, and still believes, that independence is the way of opening the door to creating the country we all want Scotland to be. It is massive in that sense and I feel that absolutely.

“The first meeting I had in the negotiations was across the corridor, here in St Andrew’s House with David Mundell – and yes, that was that meeting – but I suppose the first thing to say was that those negotiations were continuing and had been conducted by Bruce Crawford and while Bruce had taken a decision to stand down from government, if he hadn’t he would have concluded those discussions. Certainly there was a sense with the reshuffle that things had shifted a little and I certainly made it clear in that first meeting that we wanted to up the pace of the discussions and bring them to a conclusion, sooner rather than later. It was my sense, and was held by all in government, that people were beginning to tire of the process and wanted to get onto the debate and that was the sense I took into the first meeting. After that, all my discussions have been with Michael Moore and to be fair to Michael Moore, he was very frank and honest and constructive. We both wanted an agreement and there was never any sense that any side wanted it to fail. We were both clear on the red lines we had and we were able to negotiate and discuss some quite tricky issues to get to a good outcome that allowed the Scottish Parliament to be in the driving seat of the process.

“It’s also interesting that a part of the Edinburgh Agreement that has not really been focused on is the clause which commits both of us to respect the outcome of the referendum and to work together constructively and when I listen to a lot of what the UK Government has to say during the heat of the campaign, I am convinced that it will disappear pretty quickly if there’s a ‘yes’ vote, not only because it will be in all our interests to recognise a democratic decision – we have a duty to do that – but also because it’s in all our interests to resolve matters amicably.”

Sturgeon seems strangely pragmatic in response to the fact that what she describes in terms of constructive discussion between governments behind closed doors, is not reflected in the tit-for-tat discourse that the media reports.

“I think it’s easy to blame the media for that and I am no shirker for doing that when appropriate but because of the nature of the referendum campaign, clearly, both governments are on different sides and we want our positions to prevail. Some of what the UK Government is saying right now I am absolutely convinced is simply a campaign posture rather than evidence of what would happen in the event of a ‘yes’ vote. I don’t just say that because of the conditions within the Edinburgh Agreement, although I think that is more an accurate reflection of what will happen in terms of the way governments will relate to each other than what you see as shouting at each other in the media just now, but I also believe it because if you were to believe the UK Government about what would happen after independence, you would have to believe that the UK Government would be determined not to just do down Scotland but also be willing to act against its own country’s interests and I just don’t believe that.”

I suggest history shows that governments are prepared to do just that. I cite the example given to Holyrood by former Labour chancellor, Denis Healey, who told me governments of the 1970s played down the value of oil to thwart support for independence.

“The behaviour of UK governments over the years in relation to oil has been absolutely and utterly disgraceful and one of the questions for Scotland for the next wee while is whether we are we going to go down the route of ‘fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us’, kind of thing. We can’t let that continue to happen. You could, of course, construct an argument that says there was a self-interest of the UK in doing what they did because by downplaying oil, what they were trying to do was continue the myth that Scotland wasn’t capable of standing on its own two feet economically and while I think it was shameful behaviour, you could argue there was a UK selfinterest in doing so to keep us together.

“In relation to oil, they’ve done this kind of stuff over the long term, and even now, when David Cameron is making statements about oil outwith the referendum debate, which is more and more difficult these days. It’s all about a fantastic resource, historic levels of investment, a new oil boom, etc, and then take it into the referendum debate and the same David Cameron will talk about oil prices being volatile, a diminishing resource, you can’t rely on it, blah, blah, blah and people are not stupid and they see the inconsistencies in that.

“We must be the only country where you have leading politicians trying to get the country to believe that this massive, valuable, natural resource is some kind of handicap. If you took that debate and transplanted it to Norway, people would wonder what you were talking about and it has been a deliberate act by politicians to almost make us feel embarrassed that we have oil and at the very least, lead us to believe that it is not something particularly important.

“Now I don’t believe, and have never believed, that independence for Scotland and the economic viability of Scotland as an independent nation is dependent on oil. That’s not something that is a matter of belief, the facts bear that out. Our economy is strong, viable and credible without oil but oil is a massive advantage and the question should always have been, and should be for the future, how do we steward that resource in a way that give us benefits now but also gives benefits for the future? Norway, right now, is having a debate about splitting its oil fund into two because it has got too big to manage as one fund… if only we were having those same debates in Scotland.” Setting aside the issue of oil, there is no doubt that in the last 12 months there has been a rash of reports from Westminster that have poured considerable scorn on the idea of independence and I wonder whether she had expected such an almighty response?

“I suppose if you had asked me when I was 16 years old, firstly, could I imagine myself as Deputy First Minister with a referendum in a year, I wouldn’t have believed it, but had you then asked me, did I think I would have the weight of the Westminster establishment against me in the event of that being the case, I would have said ‘absolutely’. There is no doubt, and the UK Government has made it clear, that it is marshalling its resources to argue against independence. And maybe we should ask, if Scotland wasn’t economically capable of being independent, would they be so keen to argue against it? I do think, and this might not be evident in the polls yet and we have a long way to go, that the ‘No’ side made an error in the last year in the sheer weight of negativity. I think negative campaigns run into two potential difficulties; every time you come up with a scare story and you have an impact then you need a bigger scare story the next time and inevitably, you test people’s credibility as you run into things that become incredible. I think they did that most recently with their mobile phone scare story and not being able to use your phones in England. I think that had people saying, ‘hang on a minute here’ and I think they made a real mistake when someone from the inside admitted they themselves call it ‘Project Fear’ which kind of gives the game away. Lastly, I think people just get sick of negativity after a while and we have had a year of that negativity raining down on us. We have a year to go and once you have said some of the things they have said, where do you go from there? When we rebut them and when we publish the White Paper and answer all the questions that people can reasonably expect answers to then I think we get into a place where the positive arguments start to prevail.”

What does ‘reasonably expect answers to’ actually mean?

“I have been frank about this and the White Paper is being prepared as we speak and I am obviously very involved in that, that where a question is asked, and the answer depends on the outcome of negotiations that can only take place after the referendum, then my answer will be the reasonable and common-sense position, as I see it, and where it is an answer that depends on a policy decision made by a government in an independent Scotland will make, I will answer what the SNP would do if it we were in government, but clearly, another party may be in government and may answer something else. But where it is a question of transition and what happens to x, y and z, there are factual answers we can give and the White Paper will be pretty comprehensive when it comes to answering those questions.

“The White Paper I think will be, I know will be, a fantastic prospectus for the case for independence and will stand on its own and be a document that can answer questions and further the case for independence. The White Paper is a big opportunity for us and if you are asking me if it is the only thing in the next year that will seriously impact on the referendum outcome, then no, I don’t, but I do see it as a massive opportunity for us.”

And when exactly will we see the White Paper?

“Well, I have a date in my mind but unsurprisingly, I am not going to tell you that right now but November has been the ballpark figure and while the final decision about publication has still to be made, I’ll obviously try and time it to go with your date of publication, Mandy…” As we near that date, I wonder if Sturgeon’s own view of what independence means has changed over the years given that critics would say that the SNP’s vision for independence seems to offer little change since we would share the Queen, the currency and so on.

“Independence and the definition and the essence of independence is what we will decide. It would mean that powers and sovereignty are exported here so we can decide and if we exercise some of those powers to share some things because we inhabit an island with other parts of the UK, then that’s fine but the decision to do that lies with us. I don’t believe that the independence we are offering is keeping everything the same. The independence I believe in, and the independence people are voting for, gives us the ability to get our economy moving faster in the right direction, deal with some of the endemic problems of poverty that Scotland has experienced for decades, not have the punitive approach to welfare that is being imposed on us, not having to put up with the fact that all too often we get a government we don’t vote for, which is just an affront to democracy. That is independence and it is not staying the same.

“I think people, generally, do get that. There is always a danger for somebody like me to see the debate purely as presented in the newspapers and I speak to a lot of folk in my day-to-day travels and I think people do get that. They want answers to their questions about how you get from here to there and are of course as interested as I am about how we would use all the powers that we could get to do what we want but I think they do get that essential question, which is about getting the powers to create the country we want.

“I totally understand that some people are scared of that change in terms of their pensions, etc, but I would argue that the risk to folks’ pensions is not from Scotland. Why we have underfunded pension schemes just now is because of policy or lack of policy by successive UK governments over long periods of time. I absolutely recognise that we have to address concerns and, of course, people are bothered about fundamental things that affect their day-to-day lives and that is one of the central objectives of the White Paper but we also have a duty to say to folk that there are consequences to voting ‘no’. It’s a choice of two futures and people need the answers to the questions they are asking of us and the future we are asking them to opt for but there are also things to think about if they go the other way as well.

“I represent parts of Glasgow that have been represented by Labour at Westminster for generations and there is a tangible sense in those communities of ‘where has this got us’. Some of those most deprived communities are at the sharp end of some of the worse excesses of what the current government is doing, a government we didn’t vote for, and there is a feeling in those communities of whether they want to leave the power of decision-making for their futures with the people that are doing these things to them now. It is a real and tangible debate.

“Obviously, you can’t undo generations of poverty overnight but do I believe an independent government, with the levers to pull on welfare and tax and the levers to make us better on prevention and early intervention and hopefully in a Scottish context, even if it not an SNP government, with a political consensus, although maybe not so strong a consensus now given Johann Lamont’s utterances as it once was, that was committed to tackling these things then yes, I do think we could have more success in changing the lives and the prospects and futures of the people living in some of the most deprived areas of the country.

“It is the social justice stuff that drives my support for independence more than anything, although you do have to earn the ability to do these things as well but there is something less tangible about independence that I think will have an impact on the people of Scotland and that is of taking responsibility for ourselves and not blaming someone else all the time. We do all have that tendency to say it is Westminster’s fault but independence means that we take that responsibility for making things better and that national taking of responsibility would be nothing other than healthy.”