What Joanna Cherry's memoir says about the SNP and Scottish culture
Nicola Sturgeon emerges as the perfect leader for our era of ‘cancel culture’ and its ‘No Debate’ mantra
“If a family had gone through what the country did during the independence referendum, they’d likely have needed extensive therapy afterwards.”
My Scotsman colleague and friend Susan Dalgety said this to me recently, adding, “But, unfortunately, we’ve never had that.”
Susan and I were on opposite sides in 2012 – 2014; I voted and campaigned for Yes. My views about Scottish independence are now - at strongest - agnostic. My desire for another referendum, however, isn’t. I’d rather a kidney infection than support such a reckless, divisive, endeavour.
I agree with Susan. In the weeks after the vote in 2014, I wrote a piece for a pro-independence website calling for a period of reflection. I argued my side (as it was) had to accept – and understand why - we’d lost, and not mindlessly get “back on the horse” of feverish campaigning for an independence that wasn’t on the cards any more.
Many agreed, but most sincerely did not. Yes campaigners didn’t want to stop what, for many, had felt a sincerely hopeful, optimistic period of democratic flourishing, reflected in the huge turnout.
Unfortunately, all that energy subsequently funnelled into the SNP and the - by then - staunchly pro-independence Scottish Greens. Reflecting on the “tumultuous decade” since, last week saw the publication of ‘Keeping The Dream Alive’, the memoir of former SNP MP Joanna Cherry KC.
“I was an idealist who entered politics because of a cross-party campaign for radical change, not a party-political careerist,” she says. Over eight themed chapters, she argues Sturgeon’s “authoritarian” leadership led to “crucial opportunities to further the independence cause” being squandered.
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I’ll leave it to constitutional experts to assess whether Cherry’s ideas for a road-map to another referendum were, or remain, plausible. But I’m in full agreement with her that time in opposition for the SNP is desirable, and that only “a civic movement” could possibly “take the cause of independence forward” at this point.
John Swinney has said he won’t be reading Cherry’s book. A woefully incurious position. My own (misplaced) idealism about Scottish culture led me from No to Yes between 2011 - 2014, depleting due to disillusionment from living through the tumult her book outlines.
I’m hardly alone in that trajectory. If Swinney was serious about his cause, he’d surely ask why the Yes movement his party replaced lost former enthusiasts.
Throughout the book, Nicola Sturgeon emerges as the perfect leader for our ‘cancel culture’ era. ‘No Debate’ became the ringing mantra – not only on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, though there most strongly – but on anything contrary to what the SNP leadership wanted. What they wanted above all was to perpetuate themselves in power, shore up Sturgeon’s image, and, Cherry argues, put “party before country”.
Hero worship of Sturgeon
It’s no surprise to me Sturgeon is now being lovingly welcomed into my old world of the literary arts. Many of Scotland’s writers and artists campaigned for independence in 2014 under the banner ‘imagining a better Scotland’. They - independently-minded ‘creatives’ - told us they’d shine a light on injustice, hold power accountable, while defending artistic freedom gallantly.
Absolute cobblers, it transpires. Hero worship of Sturgeon, ‘No Debate’ about gender reforms, shutting down dissent, destroying ‘heretics’: all that Cherry outlines as key features of the SNP’s conduct towards independent thinkers in her former party happened simultaneously amongst a powerful faction – in hock to Sturgeon’s gender-identity policy agenda particularly - in Scotland’s culture sectors during Sturgeon’s reign.
Far from challenging this, most artists kept fearfully schtum – and still do. Scotland’s writers were impotent when ‘arts activists’ destroyed the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s sponsorship from Baillie Gifford in 2024, for example. Bizarrely, many supported that astonishing act of cultural self-harm. A disrespect for Scotland’s intellectual and artistic history has dominated this past decade. The SNP’s culture secretaries have presided over this with little more than a shrug.
Destroying good things other people built has characterised the SNP’s attitude towards its own history too, including forgetting the former Yes movement’s ideological diversity outwith the Yes/No binary.
Most egregiously, Cherry posits, this enthusiasm for historical erasure is epitomised in the treatment of former First Minister Alex Salmond. He’s not spared criticism over his post-SNP endeavours, but Cherry remains angry at the attempted erasure of his undeniably impressive achievements.
The SNP portrayed in Cherry’s book is one of maliciousness, hypocrisy, and possible criminality. She firmly believes there was a conspiratorial cabal working to bring Salmond down on trumped-up charges. She hopes one day everyone involved will be named publicly.
Court orders disallow that currently.
I’ve insufficient space here to do full justice to the Salmond chapter – which, alongside ‘Woman – Adult Human Female’ is the book’s most shocking. But, Cherry presents a well-evidenced case, not solely due to how the story unfolded before and after Salmond’s Not Guity verdicts, but due to the pattern of treatment experienced by herself and others inside the party.
The book would’ve been strengthened by a chronological account rather than themed chapters – there were instances of repetition. A small quibble. My main takeaway is admiration for Cherry’s resilience, and renewed sorrow for what was lost from the spirit of 2012 – 2014.
Of course, as Susan Dalgety – and other No voting friends remind me repeatedly – those two years felt hideous for those with no desire for Scottish independence whatsoever.
Largely due to Brexit and the wholly negative independence campaign following 2016, we’ve never seriously explored, never mind healed, from that clash of experience.
Joanna Cherry’s memoir is an important account, skilfully eviscerating the cult of personality around Nicola Sturgeon, and posing serious questions about the ethics of the SNP party machine.
Outwith the book’s revelations, however, it’s cemented my decade-long belief that it’s beyond time Scotland sat down with that proverbial therapist.
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