Nicola Sturgeon · 11:15pm Feb 17th, 2023
Putting this up here mostly just to get my thoughts down. Not looking for condolences, and may delete this at some point. We'll see.
Three days ago Nicola Sturgeon announced her stepping down as Scotland's First Minister.
I've been trying to process how I feel about this, partly because I think I've spent so long just being almost always angry at the perpetual shit show conservative and centrist England has insisted on turning all of Britain into.
You ever had a neighbour who outnumbers you fifty to one put a nuclear submarine outside the city you were born in, tell you you'll loose out on one the best deals with Europe in the world if you try and change the political situation that allows them to do this, drag you out anyway, then spend the next decade and change calling you ungrateful spongers for wanting out of this? For wanting better for yourself as a people and a nation, for wanting just the basic right to make your own mistakes? For not, and I will be angry about this for the rest of my life, wanting another country to stick it's nuclear weapons outside your city?
Because I can't recommend it.
Sad to see Sturgeon go, but she took almost a decade of shit from the absolute worst people alive and kept Scotland as steady as possible while the Tories continued to fall down their own hole for the same length of time. She did her "day job" and they lost their own rigged game.
I never saw her as a beacon or a saviour or like that, but she was what I wanted my country to be. Capable and just fucking decent, especially in the face of an increasingly conservative England trying to turn being British into an amorphous, meaningless blob and deciding empathy has no place in it.
And all the proof I really needed that she was at least decent at that part is the worst people alive hated her. I look forward to them realising they're going to keep running into the same wall over and over (Y'know, human empathy and decency) even if she's not there.
Seriously, a key part of the arrogance of the Tories and Labour, the party that calls for a better Glasgow budget by walking out of a budget meeting for a photo op (then coming back for lunch.) is the assumption that independence for Scotland is embodied by one person who annoyed them personally, and not a movement, not a right, not a solution to the inherant problems of Westminster, not a matter of survival in the incredibly stupid world they created, but an adolescent fad.
And that's supposed to be the opposition to the Tories, who take millions in water and gas from Scotland to feed England, then try and gaslight us into believing we have nothing. We generate most of the electricity for the north of Britain and we're charged double the English rate for access to the national grid. During a cost of living crisis.
Two of England's major parties not only control most of my country's policies, except for health and education which they disparage all day every day, but what is in this picture of my city and my country.
And have spent every day since the Brexit referendum saying that I don't get to hate them for it.
They seriously think one person, who worked eight years to help ensure Scotland can offer free prescriptions, free tuition, affordable transport for seniors, "baby boxes" for single mothers and struggling families, and a million other small humane things that made a difference to millions of people, and that made me genuinely proud to come from a country that prizes that kind of compassion, is their one roadblock to treating my country like their fucking back garden.
Independence is not just any one person, and not only are the SNP still around, full of people who believe Scotland has a right to make it's own decisions like giving trans people the right to be married and buried under their name (and those like Joanna Cherry who don't can fuck off if they haven't already), Sturgeon will still hold her position until an internal SNP election selects her successor, at which point I wanna say Scotland will have an election but don't quote me on that.
And as all these clowns gloat about how Scotland has finally been put it's place, Sturgeon is going to be back on the benches, still campaigning for independence and with eight years of good will from Europe.
So could the allegedly progressive English world stop fucking acting like Britain's entire mainstream progressive element is now just Mark Drakeford? Who as far as I'm concerned is basically the single decent Labour MP at this stage.
The irony is, much as I respect Sturgeon you've gotta figure she'd probably be a centrist politician at best if the far right hadn't skewered the needle for what counts as politics. A big part of her appeal as SNP leader was that she wasn't as compromised or pompous as Alex Salmond, but then so is the lint in my pocket. She's far from above critique (and actual critique of how she did her job, not bigots losing it because they didn't have their own way for once), but...yeah? Nicola Sturgeon is a good person who spent her entire career trying to make my country and good place to live for good people.
So thanks, Mrs. Sturgeon. All the respect.
I hadn't realized Scotland was so stressed. I hope the next guy is at least as good as she was (and they'll definitely be better than however many British PM's England goes through while the new gut is in office!)
5719841
Thankfully looks like it's going to settle down (or as much as the UK's whole situation can be settled at all), the new SNP leader is now Humza Yousaf, the candidate who most wanted to continue Sturgeon's work and, most importantly, is not transphobic or (and I cannot fucking believe this actually happened) went on TV to explain that they would support conversion therapy "if it was a choice".
So yeah. Sighing with relief a lot right now.
5720068
Yeesh, I know how you feel. Congrats!