Nicola Sturgeon, the working-class woman Scots will listen to

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/06/nicola-sturgeon-scots-labour-election-scotland

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It speaks volumes that, just two months before a hugely important UK general election, the most interesting politician in these isles appears to be the leader of a party that has hitherto made little impact within the Westminster bubble. It also says a lot that Nicola Sturgeon, just over 100 days into her role as Scotland’s first minister, has swiftly established herself.

She stands out for a number of reasons, not least her obvious political talents. But in the context of a world dominated by identikit politicians who, in some instances, have moved from quad to quad to quad, Sturgeon is one of the 93% educationally, the 52% in terms of gender, and representative of the vast majority of Scots in terms of her modest working-class background.

In other respects, however, the first minister of Scotland is as much a product of the professional political era as those she often criticises: comfortable with spin, triangulation and the elevation of pragmatism over principle (for example a recent U-turn on English votes for English laws). Although Sturgeon has carefully cultivated a persona that makes her appear like your average Scot, the reality is very different.

In of a world dominated by identikit politicians, Sturgeon stands out

All her strengths were on display in a recent Guardian interview: charm, unflappability and, above all, message discipline; in 12 minutes Sturgeon said little that was new. Her predecessor, Alex Salmond (soon to publish a referendum memoir), would have been expansive, riffing (at length) on various issues and probably creating trouble for himself in the process.

There is little of that with Sturgeon in this, or indeed any other, interview. She has worked tremendously hard to get where she is and clearly has no intention of risking that by speaking out of turn. Sure, she’ll joke about her domestic life with husband (and party chief executive) Peter Murrell, but even that is carefully contrived. When Ian Jack interviewed her more than a year ago he searched for a suitable adjective, settling on “enamelled” or simply “neat and careful”.

Privately, however, the new first minister is warm and witty, itself a remarkable transformation from her previous reputation as a “nippy sweetie” (a confident woman in Scots parlance) during her early years in the Scottish parliament. While Salmond believed that over-confidence and occasionally bullying behaviour was the only way of achieving his goals, his successor clearly intends to charm her opponents into submission.

Thus she cites the former Labour leader Harold Wilson as the UK’s greatest prime minister (a view shared by Salmond), part of a long-standing SNP strategy to position itself as the inheritor of that party’s progressive mantle. Of course Sturgeon caricatures in claiming that Labour no longer offers an alternative to the Tories (a word she almost spits out), for a party committed to a 50p tax rate, a bankers’ bonus and mansion tax is, in some respects, to the left of the SNP.

In her Guardian interview she concentrated on Labour’s commitment to maintaining the broad outlines of coalition austerity (she recently set out a well-received alternative in a speech at UCL) should it form the next government, so a line Ed Balls must hold for the sake of Middle England provides the nationalists with a great big economic stick with which to beat the once dominant party in Scotland.

Related: The leader interviews: Nicola Sturgeon on Trident, Labour and independence

Trident is used to similar effect. Indeed, central to Sturgeon’s ideology is a rock-solid belief that Labour ditched its principles the day it abandoned unilateral disarmament, a view that lends some of her public statements a curiously 1980s quality. Under such criteria then even Nye Bevan – despite having created the NHS Sturgeon once led in Scotland – wouldn’t quite measure up in the SNP leader’s eyes.

Caution, as touched upon earlier, is central to the Sturgeon style, so when asked about another referendum, she delegates the decision to “the Scottish people” rather than her strategists, yet at the same time doesn’t hesitate to flag up an in/out European referendum as the straw that might break the other union’s back.

The decision, of course, lies chiefly with her, but the first minister currently occupies such an authoritative position that she can afford to take things slowly, and her focus is rightly on the forthcoming election. Labour is currently being urged to rule out any deal with the nationalists, but even if it does, perhaps at tomorrow’s Scottish conference in Edinburgh, there’s little evidence that Scots are listening. They’re much more likely to pay attention to a working-class girl from Ayrshire.