Reading in bed this morning an Edwardian biography of Peter
III of Russia, a tragic figure because of his pro-Prussian obsession (he was
also Duke of Holstein), I came upon a sentence describing him which struck me
as applying to Nicola Sturgeon: "No stubbornness is so stubborn as that of
a feeble mind under the domination of a fixed idea." (Nisbet Bain, Peter
III, 1902, p. 43; to Bain and his contemporaries, “feeble” implied “narrow”)
I wish I had conveyed that point as clearly in my own book
which, though not on Sturgeon specifically, mentions her a lot and is, in the
second half, substantially about the SNP stubborn obsession with a fixed idea.
The idea was born in the seventies, nourished in the eighties by Margaret
Thatcher, and given an opportunity to come to fruition by Blair, Dewar and the Labour
gang who thought it would make them friends in Scotland. Then – horror of horrors
– it was rejected by the Scottish people, rather as the Russian
nobility rejected the Prussianism of Peter.
Nonetheless, the circumstances have something in common. Let
us hope that Sturgeon and the pilot fish that swim about her, catering to her
every obsession, come to as abrupt an end as Peter did (though not in the same way:
he was beaten to death by Count Orlov in his palace and the rumour put about
that he had died of “haemorrhoidal colic”).
My description of the "court" surrounding Sturgeon,
and the obsequiousness of its members, which reminds me of the eighteenth
century Russian court, with all the corruption but without the talent, can be read here: "THE JUSTICE FACTORY: CAN THE
RULE OF LAW SURVIVE IN 21st CENTURY SCOTLAND?" (Ian Mitchell, 2020)
It is not a party-political screed. It has been endorsed by
both ends of the political spectrum here: Ian ("Stone of Destiny")
Hamilton QC, the renegade nationalist, and Adam Tomkins, who is both an MSP
(Tory) and Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Glasgow. The
Foreword is written by Lord Hope of Craighead, ex-Deputy President of the UK
Supreme Court and Alan Page, Professor of Public Law at Dundee, who is the
author “Constitutional Law of Scotland”, the main reference work, has written
an Introduction to Part II.
Details of the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1981993401?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
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| A Russian Tsar |
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| A Scottish nationalist |
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