Nicola Sturgeon: Don’t forget her day job
Nicola Sturgeon marks the final day of campaigning in Edinburgh
So what is Nicola Sturgeon up to this afternoon? Campaigning you reckon?
Well, no actually. It is First Minister’s Questions this afty in the Scottish parliament. That’s the day job. And that is what she will be doing.
It is often forgotten – though never by Tory, LibDem or Labour activists – that Nicola Sturgeon is not in fact standing for election. She remains MSP and First Minister and that is not going to change.
Hence all the debate over who will really wield the power if the polls are right. Alex Salmond at the helm of a battalion of MPs or First Minister Sturgeon back in Edinburgh running another country? You can see the potential dilemma there…
It is some set-up.
Critics argue that the SNP campaign is thus all slickness and spin headed up by someone not even standing and this is all somehow illegitimate, wrong, unfair.
The SNP would say she stands as the clear figurehead of a mass movement which has only strengthened since the lost Indy referendum back in the autumn.
On the ground the extraordinary Sturgeon bandwagon – juggernaut – rolls on.
Today supporters were – literally – singing her love-songs as she went about the selfies.
A woman shouts:
“Nicola will you marry me?”
“That’s my husband standing there,” she replies pointing at husband/SNP Chief Exec in the crowd: “Mind,” she continues, “if he wasn’t here I’d give it serious thought.”