On 11 February 2015, Nicola Sturgeon spoke at an event co-hosted by the Constitution Unit and the UCL Department of Political Science. Sam Sharp reports on the event.
Recent predictions suggest the Scottish National Party (SNP) could win as many as 54 seats in May. A poll surge of this kind is not what most would have expected to follow a lost referendum on the party’s cornerstone issue. It is in this context, however, that an emboldened Nicola Sturgeon addressed UCL and the Constitution Unit in her first London speech since becoming First Minister of Scotland. She delivered a robust rejection of austerity, setting out a vision of an alternative Scottish economic approach and an enhanced role for the (potentially many) SNP MPs.
It was evident from the off that speaking in London would not tone down Sturgeon’s anti-Westminster message. On austerity she was at pains to make her point especially clear: these are ‘Westminster proposals’ made by the ‘Westminster parties’ in a stale ‘Westminster debate’. The SNP, she argued, are not tainted by this brush. A contrast was drawn between the ‘wide-ranging, passionate and fundamental’ referendum debate and the ‘bizarrely and depressingly narrow’ Westminster discourse (although this supposed contrast in debate quality should probably be taken with some scepticism given the criticisms of scaremongering and intimidation that surrounded the referendum).
The Constitution Unit Blog 