"Events, dear boy, Events"
This was not our proudest moment since Devolution ... a defeated, humbled, yet still-proud former First Minister.
There is something rather poignant about this image, of a short marching middle aged woman, tense-shouldered, surrounded by yellow-jacketed police, wearing a pair of white high-heeled shoes with a very frumpy navy blue suit.
At the height of the Covid Pandemic scare, she held almost absolute power over life and death. She even told us to ‘stay at home’ - and most of us did what we were told.
How things change! Not that long ago, a prominent police tent was erected outside her private home, as police searched for evidence of her alleged criminality. Nothing proven, allegations of fiscal incontinence abound, unaccounted-for camper vans and missing campaign funds - her response: “move along , folks, nothing to see “!
The arm is held defensively across her front, as vain protection from the omnipresent media, her chin is up, whilst her mouth is tight-lipped and defiant.
And followers of Scottish politics will know why. Nicola Sturgeon was a prominent leader of the SNP, a protégé of the wily Alex Salmond. She came from fairly humble origins, but she is now a victim of her own policy and political failures.
If it all sounds like the current political state of Pakistan, the analogies are entirely of her own making. She was in charge, she had a massive popularity rating, yet she seems to have done her best to send her former mentor to jail, and her husband was the CEO of the SNP - such circumstances are surely not entirely coincidental?
Ultimately she was crushed by ‘Events, dear boy, Events’ as is every politician who ever stood on a podium and chanced it.
And yet, even this famous epitaph is contested: nobody knows who coined it:
”Prime Minister Jim Callaghan didn’t say, “Crisis? What crisis?” and Benjamin Disraeli’s coalition quote was a case of political self-interest rather than constitutional wisdom.
I had, however, thought that Harold Macmillan really did say “Events, dear boy, events” when asked what was most likely to knock governments off course.
Now, however, I know better:
It’s not as if it’s even been reliably authenticated. Some say Macmillan made it to President Kennedy, others to a journalist after dinner. Denis Healey claims it referred to foreign policy.
Alistair Horne, Macmillan’s official biographer (who tells me he can’t put his finger on it, either) thinks it may have been a response to the Profumo affair.
As with the case of Lewis Carroll, even relatively recent historical truth can prove remarkably elusive, with hard evidence difficult to find and much apparently robust evidence simply turning out to be a case of everyone quoting everyone else.”
’Events, dear boy, events”
Well, if you, readers, can find out the origins of the quote, please post it in the discussion below!
I've met many of the players in Scottish Politics and UK politics over the last 30 years : but only superficially - not like best buddies or anything. I don't do gossip: they all seem quite normal in the flesh.
Nicola Sturgeon, Donald Dewar, Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, and all the chorus etc etc etc: they all do many 'press the flesh' functions and soirees - and as an activist for carers rights I get the odd invite. My fanciest invite ever was to 10 Downing Street in 1997 just after Labour won their landslide - and the celebrities, politicians and journos were wall to wall.
I've attended Holyrood (the Scottish Parliament) twice this last year, but the magic and glamour has been lost: it once felt as if history was being made there: now it feels more like a Mausoleum of lost dreams. Sad actually.
Never mind, I'm hoping things might change for the better.