First Ardern, now Sturgeon: leaders echo ‘dehumanising’ pressures
Like ex-New Zealand PM, Scotland’s first minister speaks of duty to admit
how ‘brutality’ of political life got to her
Nicola Sturgeon (left) and Jacinda Arden both spoke of wrestling with competing demands of high office.
Composite: Getty
Caroline Davies, Guardian
Wed 15 Feb 2023 18.20 GMT
She was, she stressed, “a human being”, not just a politician. And as one who had wrestled with accepting she simply no longer had the reserves needed to do the job justice, it was her “duty to say so”.
Just three weeks after insisting there was “plenty left in the tank”, Nicola Sturgeon’s shock announcement revealed the personal toll she said eight years as Scotland’s first minister had exacted on her and her loved ones.
Could she have battled on for longer? Yes. Could she have given it “every ounce of energy that it needs?” Then the answer was “different”, she said. And she had “a duty to say so now”.
As she spelled out her reasons in detail, the echoes of another, equally surprising resignation, were impossible to ignore. When Jacinda Ardern announced last month that “I no longer have enough left in the tank” to continue as New Zealand’s prime minister, there was equal shock. She too spoke of a duty to admit her doubts.
“I am leaving because with such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not,” Ardern said. “I am human. Politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.”
Such admissions appear to be far rarer among male politicians than females ones. Critics will accuse both women of stepping down before being pushed. However, both gave a glimpse of how politics had become personal.
“A first minister is never off duty. Particularly in this day and age, there is virtually no privacy,” Sturgeon said. “Even ordinary stuff that most people take for granted like going for a coffee with friends, or for a walk on your own, becomes very difficult.”
“I am a human being,” she stressed more than once. “And every human being every day wrestles with a whole load of conflicting emotions. And over the last number of weeks, probably since around the turn of the year, I’ve been struggling with just that.”
Both had found themselves in the eye of the storm immediately before announcing their departures. Ardern, who when elected was the youngest female world leader, and who was praised in particular for the compassion and strength she exhibited after the Christchurch terror attacks, had seen her popularity fall.
She had faced a significant increase in threats of violence, particularly from conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine groups infuriated by the country’s vaccine mandates and lockdowns. So much so that the New Zealand actor Sam Neill tweeted at the time she quit: “Her treatment, the pile on, in the last few months has been disgraceful and embarrassing. All the bullies, the misogynists, the aggrieved. She deserved so much better. A great leader.”
Sturgeon, though confident she could lead her party to victory in the next elections, had recently found herself entangled in the issue of transgender rights, among other things.
They each insisted these difficulties were not factors in their decisions. Yet both had been subjected to online abuse as a result of them. Sturgeon spoke of the “much greater intensity” and “brutality” of life as a politician today.
Rosie Campbell, a professor of politics and director of the Global Institute of Leadership at King’s College London, believes female politicians are more vulnerable to abuse in this environment.
“We had a period in time in the 90s and early 2000s where we had more women in politics. Social media wasn’t so present, and actually the quality of the discourse was better than it is today,” she said. “What I suspect is a minority of individuals have managed to lower and brutalise the debate for everybody. It’s something we have got to tackle because not only will it force good people out of politics, it will have consequences in terms of the quality of legislation that is passed.”
The Labour MP Chris Bryant, chair of the standards and privileges committee, acknowledged the specific problems female politicians faced when he tweeted: “Life in modern politics is tough so I want to thank Nicola Sturgeon for every ounce of energy she has given and every personal sacrifice she has made in public life. We all take slings and arrows – and women politicians more than most – so thank you.”
Caroline Nokes, the chair of the Commons women and equalities committee, has highlighted the specific pressures faced by female politicians.
“The most glaring problem is the shocking abuse and misogyny which all women in politics and especially minority ethnic women suffer,” she said when the committee published a report titled Equality in the Heart of Democracy: a Gender Sensitive House of Commons last year.
“Vicious abuse, including rape and death threats, is totally unacceptable. Specific action must be taken to protect women MPs and candidates. Without such action, an entire generation of women could be deterred from entering parliament,” Nokes said.
For Sturgeon, the moment is a major milestone. “I will be 53 this year. I entered parliament when I was 29. I’ve been in government since I was 37. I have literally done this in one capacity or another for all of my life. I’ve been Nicola Sturgeon the politician for all of my life.”
She added: “But having reached this stage in my life, maybe I want to spend a bit of time on Nicola Sturgeon the person, the human being, and contribute differently.”
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While the above story makes an important point in the brutality of social media on women in particular, it lends only a single sentence to the real cause of Sturgeon's stress and demise. Like Jacinda Ardern, Nicola was far left in her beliefs. Far left of the Scottish people in general, and that contributed greatly to the criticism she received in the past few months.
People are rejecting wokeism all over the world as it's madness becomes more and more obvious. Nicola couldn't have made it more clear than in the craziness about transgenders and women's prisons.
PIERS MORGAN The seven deadly words highly intelligent Nicola
Sturgeon couldn’t bring herself to say which caused her downfall
Piers Morgan, The Sun
Published: 14:06, 15 Feb 2023,
‘A WOMAN is an adult human female.’
Those were the seven deadly words which Nicola Sturgeon couldn’t bring herself to say, and which ultimately played a large part in her downfall.
Piers says Ms Sturgeon 'threw herself onto her own career sword'
And how spectacularly ironic that one of the most successful women in modern British politics willingly threw herself onto her own career sword because of an abject, mind-bogglingly stupid disinclination to state a simple basic irrefutable fact about her own biological sex.
In May last year, Scotland’s First Minister point-blank refused to answer the ‘what is a woman?’ question, saying: ‘I'm just not going to get into this debate at a level that's about simplified and lurid headlines.’
Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored weekdays on Sky 526, Virgin Media 606, Freeview 237, Freesat 217 or on Fox Nation in the US
But just three months later, she gleefully chased simplified lurid headlines when England’s brilliant Lionesses won the Euro 22 Championships, by tweeting: ‘Brilliant @lionesses and just goes to show… when you want something done… ask the women!’
Hmmm.
How can we do that, Ms Sturgeon, when you can’t even say what a woman is?
Her gender-confused chickens came home to roost with the ridiculous decision to place a male rapist named Adam Graham into a Scottish female prison because he pretended to be a woman named Isla Bryson at his trial to get an easier sentence and be put among future potential targets, like a fox being locked up in a hen coop.
This was the shocking and inevitable consequence to Sturgeon’s dismally ill-conceived campaign to make it easier for people to change their gender and self-identify in any way they see fit even if it means seriously eroding women’s rights to fairness, equality, and safety in the process.
Her Gender Recognition Reform bill, passed in December and then rightfully blocked by Rishi Sunak, would give a legal rubber stamp to this woke nonsense, and represents a shameful betrayal of women.
After Adam Graham was finally moved back to a male prison last month, but only after an intense media furore forced Sturgeon into a humiliating U-turn, she was hoisted by her own virtue-signalling petard in an excruciating 52-second interview with ITV News journalist Peter Smith that I think played a big part in her decision to quit.
‘Are all trans women, women?’ he asked.
‘That’s not the point we’re dealing with here,’ Sturgeon snapped, even though that was of course exactly the point we were dealing with.
‘That’s the question I’m asking,’ Smith persisted.
‘Trans women ARE women,’ stammered Sturgeon, ‘but in the prison context there is no automatic right for a trans woman…’
‘So,’ Smith interrupted, ‘there are contexts where a trans woman is not a woman?’
‘No, there is…’ Sturgeon replied, before pausing and laughing awkwardly as she realised that she’d fallen into the giant trap she’d laid for herself, ‘…circumstances in which a trans woman will be housed in the male prison estate because of the nature of the crime.’
‘Is there any context in which a woman born as a woman will be housed in the male estate?’ asked Smith.
‘Look, we’re talking here about trans women,’ said Sturgeon.
‘I’m asking about women born as women,’ said Smith.
‘I don’t think there are circumstances there, but…’
‘So, it’s different for trans women?’
‘Well yes…’
‘So, they’re not equal.’
It was a preposterous exchange that exposed the hideous intellectual vacuum in the First Minister’s gender stance and surely helped seal her fate in the eyes of even her most loyal supporters?
The most incomprehensible thing about all this is that I always found Nicola Sturgeon to be one of the most ballsy and up-front politicians when it came to facing the media music.
She never hid in fridges like Boris Johnson to avoid scrutiny.
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