Scotland’s new First Minister has been much lauded over the past few days for being the only woman ever to hold her job, for appointing a gender-balanced cabinet, for whipping up the massed ranks of her supporters into a frenzy at a rock concert-style gathering in Glasgow. A newspaper launched to promote Scottish nationalism hails “a bright, brand new Scotland”, as if there had been a revolution or, at the very least, a change of government.
There hasn’t and there is nothing in the latest line-up of reshuffled ministers to suggest that anything has altered. It’s even difficult to get excited about the increased female representation in Nicola Sturgeon’s cabinet when you see the characters involved.
Ms Sturgeon takes over the reins of her party two months after its defeat in the independence referendum. She has no mandate in the country to carry on pursuing a separatist agenda yet that is what she intends to do, proving very quickly that her political outlook is no different to the boss she loyally served for more than 10 years.
As soon as she succeeded Alex Salmond, in a coronation two weeks ago, she vowed that the campaign to break up Britain remained her top priority.
She has been buoyed by the surge in SNP membership which now stands at more than 90,000 and by opinion polls showing the nationalists ahead in both Westminster and Holyrood surveys. These encouragements, and the distracting roar of approval from her own audiences, have led her to believe she is on a historic mission, to fulfil a “rising demand for another referendum”.
In fact, the rising demand of most Scots is for better governance from the SNP and here, in her day job as First Minister, Sturgeon does have the authority, under devolution, to deliver. Taxpayers will be watching closely to see if her “team of all the talents” (her description, not mine) delivers, too, in their various departments.
The promotion of Angela Constance to the crucial education brief will cause the most concern. Here is a politician who used her recent platform as a candidate in the SNP’s deputy leadership race (which she didn’t win) to re-stage the referendum. “There should be no stepping off the gas in the fight for independence,” she said last month.
Can her focus really be on improving Scotland’s schools and creating that land of fairness and opportunity the nationalists aspire to, when she has dedicated herself so wholeheartedly to the secessionist battle?
Scottish education is completely controlled from Edinburgh but successive ministers Labour and SNP have lacked the gumption for reform. Ms Constance does not look like a mould breaker.
Roseanna Cunningham, a republican and resolute left-winger, has been rewarded with a cabinet post, while the culturally impaired Fiona Hyslop (who presided over this country’s only recent rebellion, the one at Creative Scotland) astonishingly keeps her arts brief and Ms Sturgeon’s close friend, but otherwise undistinguished, Shona Robison gets the massive challenge of Health.
The only movements of note among the men are the (about time) exits of Mike Russell at Education and Kenny MacAskill at Justice, but there is nothing much to look forward to from the familiar front bench faces of John Swinney, Alex Neil and Keith Brown.
Today, Ms Sturgeon announces her programme for government; she has said she wants a nation that will “address poverty, support business, promote growth and tackle inequality”, ambitions too bland to reveal much about her direction.
The biggest departure from the Salmond era would be to omit any mention of independence and concentrate on what is achievable in the already devolved areas of domestic policy. Highly unlikely, of course but this would signal that the SNP leader is prepared to put all the Scottish people before her party and strive to be the unifying figurehead the country needs.
Another test of how “new” her Scotland is comes tomorrow, when the Smith Commission is expected to publish its recommendations on more powers for the parliament. If she responds to this constructively, with a readiness to reach consensus with the unionists and resists the temptation to scrap with London, she will display both maturity and mettle, for which this columnist would give her credit.