Mick Hartley

Kathleen Stock in the Times:

According to her autobiography, Frankly, Nicola Sturgeon developed a fascination with words as a schoolgirl that hasn’t ever left her. Still, there must be some words and phrases she’s tired of hearing by now. “Alex Salmond”, “gender-critical”, “luxury motorhome parked on your mother-in-law’s driveway” are all safe bets. But if there’s one word the former first minister never seems to get bored with, it’s “misogyny”. It crops up in the memoir 16 times and has its own index entry.

Page 1 sets the tone: “Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism.” Alleged examples include the way Salmond used to talk to her, unfair press treatment and the “far-right cabal” that “hijacked” the trans debate by pointing out that the rapist Isla Bryson, placed in a woman’s prison, was a man.

This week the M-word was in heavy rotation again as the former SNP leader did interviews lamenting what she called an “age-old cry”: “that when a man does something wrong, the first thing [some] will do is look for the woman to blame”.

Though I suppose we should congratulate Sturgeon on her newfound ability to accurately identify the sex of criminals, as usual she is somewhat misstating the grounds of critics’ complaints. The real issue is that when the chief executive of a ruling party does something wrong — specifically, using party money on fancy tableware, bean-to-cup coffee machines, handcrafted crystal cruets, etc — onlookers are bound to wonder why the party leader didn’t notice. And especially when they were married and shared a kitchen. But for Sturgeon, such reactions are yet more evidence of the way the cards are stacked against her. And she seems to think the global sisterhood will sympathise: “Women all over the country, the world […] will recognise what I’m saying.” In a BBC interview yesterday she said she refused to contribute to a culture that blames women “for the actions of the men in their lives”….

The ready availability of a misogyny defence has been extremely helpful for female politicians. In Sturgeon’s case it distracted from whatever mess she was in at the time, insinuating a sinister explanation for any criticism and making her seem the plucky underdog. It emitted progressive vibes consonant with a modernised SNP while implicitly setting up an inner circle of women supporters against an out-group of nasty men. And although she claims to abhor traditional feminine stereotypes, ironically this fitted nicely with another aspect of her persona: the nation’s “chief mammy”, sleeves up, kettle on, useless males shooed out of the kitchen so the wummin could talk sense among themselves. Just nobody ask how much her kettle cost.

But the emotive cues aren’t working in the way they used to. No doubt this is partly due to all those photos of her in close proximity to high-end coffee machines. But it’s also because the misogyny gambit has grown stale through overuse….

It’s all Nicola has left – and it’s not working any more.