Nicola Sturgeon is no Jacinda Ardern no matter what some SNP supporters think – Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP

The tsunami on which Jacinda Ardern was returned to power in New Zealand on Saturday caused quite a stir.

Jacinda Ardern holds the first meeting of her Labour Party MPs since she won a landslide general election victory (Picture: Marty Melville/AFP via Getty Images)

Her victory would have been enough to embarrass the Chinese Communist Party and was chalked up in large part due to her handling of coronavirus. Cue thousands of online nationalists, appropriating Ardern as being of their stable and suggesting that Nicola Sturgeon was Scotland’s answer to this new global political superstar.

Within hours Ardern had disappointed them, using her time in the spotlight of world attention to call for an end to “fierce nationalism”. It may have been in reference to problems in the UN, but New Zealand’s premier is of the international Labour movement and, as such, her political compass is fixed towards values like solidarity across borders.

Were she in Scotland, she would very probably be fighting against a second divisive independence referendum and hounded out of public meetings by SNP activists, screaming the words “Red Tory” in her face.

Anti-English bigotry

The attempt by the SNP to cast the First Minister in Ardern’s image is a fascinating insight into how they are attempting to disguise Scottish nationalism as something wholly different from any other brand of populist separatism. It won’t work. Scottish nationalism is at times fierce and will always carry with it a dark underbelly of anti-English bigotry.

This ‘wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing’ strategy is self-evident in the comments of Nicola Sturgeon this week when she declared she was “deeply frustrated and depressed” that Boris Johnson was now preparing for a ‘no-deal’ Brexit after she suspended her Scottish independence campaign to focus on the pandemic. Wait, what? Anyone who has been in at least semi-conscious in Scotland these past nine months would see the lie in that suggestion.

You need only look to the legislative programme for the vanishingly short period of time before this parliament rises for the election and there in the heart of it you will find a Bill that paves the way for another border poll. More prosaically, just this week, a special adviser to the First Minister was caught hectoring M&S to remove Union Jack flags from packets of Aberdeen Angus beef. Big or small, the SNP's battle for independence rages on.

Newfound goodwill won’t last

One of the reasons the First Minister has been enjoying her own popularity purple patch in recent months is that she’s managed to hold our attention while leaving the talk of separation to others. She’s had hundreds of hours of uninterrupted lunchtime coverage, but she’s mostly kept it to the solemn managerialism of her virus response.

To a certain degree, it’s working. She now has the ear of corners of society that would have immediately changed the channel away from her. But that can’t last. If she wants a mandate for a second referendum then sooner or later she will have to pivot back to independence. When that happens she’ll slough off a good chunk of that newfound goodwill in a heartbeat.

Nicola Sturgeon is no Jacinda Ardern. While the latter is celebrated for keeping Covid mortality at close to single-digits, Scotland’s pandemic response has been lower-bottom table in the international context. One leader has captured the imagination of the world – of what could be, beyond the politics of division. The other is Nicola Sturgeon.

Alex Cole-Hamilton is Liberal Democrat MSP for Edinburgh Western

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