Sturgeon nurses her wounds after Scottish leaders' debate

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 8 Απριλίου 2015 - 07:55

The heavyweight debating champion of the UK and leader of the Scottish National party, Nicola Sturgeon, returned home to Scotland to take part in what might have been presumed to be an exhibition bout against a few local stiffs. She ended up nursing more bruises than expected.

They came mostly from Jim Murphy, who has been wandering the country with a zombified expression, pausing occasionally to be stabbed by the latest desperate opinion poll figures.

His best moment came when a young girl in the audience with luscious long locks told him he had convinced her, the sort of remark no middle-aged man expects to hear again, certainly not if they are leading the Scottish Labour party in the worst year in its history. She said she would now vote Labour. "Only another five million to go," he murmured.

The second-best came when he was jousting with Ms Sturgeon over the usual nonsense about who was going to cut exactly how much. "Don't mislead the voters," he told her. "You may get away with that when you're having debates in England but you won't be go away with it up here."

And he was right. The whole night, shown on ITV Scotland and hard to find south of the border, was a tribute to the Scottish notion that they do things better there.

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The four leaders sounded far less wooden and nerve-wracked than the UK-wide contestants. Their audience in Edinburgh was trusted to join in regularly and proved articulate and testing. The host, Bernard Ponsonby, unknown outside Scotland, was commanding but fair. The tone was mostly civil and amiable, yet suffused with all the suppressed hatreds of a small but argumentative country.

At the same time it was oddly consensual. The essence of Scottish politics is that there is no vast difference in the world view of its leaders (hence the hatred). Back in London Nigel Farage of Ukip and Natalie Bennett of the Greens have no clue what the other one is talking about, so there is no room for anything other than mutual bewilderment. In Edinburgh it's knife war over each small increment of devolution, austerity or tax rises.

<>He is a curious figure, Mr Murphy. Watch him at work - whether talking to journalists or young mums - and he is highly professional. Yet he has a strange emotional distance, although this profession was not the one he wanted - and if a 20 per cent swing does hit Renfrewshire East, he will drift into oblivion with a secret song in his heart.

But something about the sight of wee Nicola seemed to galvanise him. Towering over his opponent, he never allowed her jabbing style to get through. Ruth Davidson of the Conservatives looked and sounded a bit too angry. Willie Rennie of the Lib Dems had the air of a Scottish football manager, explaining away the latest Saturday afternoon disaster as cheerfully as he could. They were fringe contestants.

The four of them are due to go through it all again on Wednesday night - on the BBC, this time with Ukip and Greens in tow. But surely there comes a moment when even the Scots say enough is enough.

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