SNP officials were so devoted to Nicola Sturgeon that one offered to “take a bullet” for the former First Minister, according to whistleblowers who sat on the party’s ruling body. They lifted the lid on extraordinary levels of sycophancy and “groupthink” during Sturgeon’s tenure.
Whistleblower Accounts of NEC Meeting
Allison Graham, who raised the alarm on SNP finances in 2021, told of a meeting of the party’s NEC after it emerged the Scottish Government faced a parliamentary inquiry on the Alex Salmond affair. She said: “Stewart Stevenson, who was the National Secretary at the time, was actually crying in that meeting about Nicola. And there was a guy who was the membership convener at the time, who worked for former MSP Kevin Stewart, and he said, ‘I’d take a bullet for you, Nicola.’ I was like, ‘Good God, are you actually saying that?’ You could have written a book on groupthink 101, and use it to explain what not to do, how not to run an organisation. It was so sycophantic and I thought, this is absolutely shocking.”
Sturgeon's Response to Questions
Later in the meeting, Allison recalled asking the First Minister why she had not announced her own independent judge-led inquiry, rather than letting it become a party-political probe at Holyrood. She said: “Nicola just glared at me. Someone else came on and read off this absolute word salad and Nicola responded: ‘Good question.’ I was like, there was a question there? Nicola was just killing time to respond to the word salad, then she responded to someone else. She responded to the ‘I’d take a bullet for you’ comment by saying something like ‘Oh, there’s no need for that but I appreciate the sentiment.’ Then she came back to me and just said, ‘Well, you’ll never keep everybody happy all the time.’ And that was it.”
Former Women's Convener's Reaction
Former women’s convener Caroline McAllister, who also attended the meeting, said: “Stewart Stevenson was National Secretary - the guardian, effectively, of the party - and there he was crying about poor Nicola. It was cringeworthy. Had Ricky Gervais written some of what I witnessed, nobody would believe it, they would say it’s too fantastical.”
Political Reaction
Rachael Hamilton, Scottish Conservative deputy leader, said: “This sycophancy and cowardice is something you’d expect from a cult, not a democratic political party. The SNP show the same contempt for their own members who dissent as they demonstrate in government.” The SNP was contacted for comment.
