Nicola Sturgeon: Scotland’s Miss Havisham
Trapped in the past, fixated on lost dreams, and presiding over a decaying house—how Sturgeon’s legacy mirrors Dickens’ tragic spinster.
Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure in devolved Scottish politics was marked by dominance at the ballot box, matched only by her failure in governance. Her legacy, in many ways, resembles Dickens’ Miss Havisham. Like the infamous spinster of Great Expectations, Sturgeon presided over a grand vision that never came to pass—clinging obsessively to the dream of Scottish independence while the nation’s institutions crumbled around her. Wrapped in a Saltire instead of a tattered wedding dress, she ruled not as a pragmatic leader but as a tragic figure, unable to move beyond the grievances that ultimately destroyed her.
The Unfulfilled Dream
“I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine” - Pip meets Miss Havisham, Great Expectations
When the orphan Pip met Miss Havisham for the first time Dicken’s had him note her bizarre surroundings. Miss Havisham deliberately froze time at the moment of her betrayal, dwelling within that moment indefinitely. Sturgeon, too, built her entire political career around moments of defining disappointments—the dashed hopes.
Miss Havisham’s life had been shaped by a defining moment of betrayal: being left at the altar. Sturgeon’s political slow-climb to the top was similarly defined. Few today remember that the ‘selfie-queen’ did not sign on to be Alex Salmond’s running mate in the 2004 SNP leadership contest for the good of her party. She was on track to lose that same leadership contest to Rosanna Cunningham until Salmond jumped in. Her party were set on jilting her at the SNP leadership altar until Salmond’s offer of Deputy advanced her career.
More significantly, the 2014 independence referendum best reflects Sturgeon’s tragedy. Like Havisham, she refused to move on, ensuring that all SNP policy, rhetoric, and energy revolved around a dream that never materialized. Despite electoral success, she never came close to delivering a second referendum, yet remained trapped in its lost promise. Havisham was frozen time in her decaying mansion, Sturgeon built her entire leadership political career around her similarly frozen moment in time, unfortunately dragging a nation into wallowing with her in frozen grief.
The Crumbling House of Scotland
“Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a court-yard in front, and that was barred; so, we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to open it.” - Satis House, Great Expectations
Miss Havisham’s once grand mansion home fell into dust and decay, so too has Scotland’s key institutions under Ms Sturgeon’s watch. The education system, once-upon-a-time the pride of the nation has slipped down international rankings. Higher education, long underfunded as a result of the ‘free’ tuition wheeze, struggles beneath underfunding, with universities facing severe financial crises. Her flagship policy of closing the attainment gap - which she insisted on being the yard measure of her success - is stalled. Inequality entrenched. Scotland’s NHS faces severe pressures as economic stagnation sets in. Yet Nicola Sturgeon remained preoccupied with the constitutional wrangling, fixated on the moment when Scottish voters jilted her at the metaphorical alter. Fixing the fundamental issues remained side-lined.
The Scottish economy under her leadership mirrored Havisham’s neglected estate - stagnant, dependent on past glories, and ultimately unable to support itself. Productivity growth remained sluggish, over-reliance on the public sector stifled innovation, and high taxation deterred business investment. The much-promised ‘Saudi Arabia of renewables’ never materialised at scale, and the collapse of key infrastructure projects - such as the ferry fiasco - exposed the SNP’s chronic mismanagement. Scotland promised a transformation but left the national economy weaker, less competitive, while empowering a coalition with Scottish ‘Green’ politicians which dismissed the economics of growth in favour of empty platitude ‘wellbeing economy’.
The Illusion of Exceptionalism
“I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.” - Miss Havisham tearful confession to Pip on how she ‘taught’ Estella, Great Expectations
Miss Havisham convinced herself that she could control the fates of others, much as Sturgeon believed from her handling of COVID-19. She fashioned herself as a ‘progressive’ alternative to Westminster, but the mask of competence proved more illusionary than real. She mirrored Boris Johnson’s mistakes - most tragically, the decision to discharge untested hospital patients into care homes. This caused devastating outbreaks. Yet through political cunning and - as always - “taking no lessons” from critics, managed to maintain an air of superiority. Often leaking or pre-empting UK government decisions, she succeeded in appearing distinct, helped along by BBC Scotland’s daily platform. All the while the practical impacts of the rhetorical platitudes were as empty as they were negligible.
Miss Havisham believed she had power over Estella's fate, moulding her into someone incapable of love. However, this belief ultimately crumbles when Estella rejects her, proving that even Miss Havisham cannot fully control the course of another person’s life. Similarly, the moment came when Nicola Sturgeon resigned when confronted by an electorate rejecting her identity politics obsessions.
Identity Politics: Scotland’s Estella?
“Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!"
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her.”
- Havisham urging Pip to love Estella in Great Expectations, despite knowing she had raised her to be emotionally detached and incapable of love. Havisham delighted in seeing her own suffering reflected in others.
Estella was raised by Miss Havisham to break hearts as a means of exacting revenge on the world. Sturgeon’s equivalent was her commitment to a faux-progressive identity politics creed, which became her preferred battleground over the real policy priorities on health, education, child poverty. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill became a textbook case of policy capture - defining her social policy - ironically becoming her undoing. Culminating in the notorious Adam Graham - aka ‘Isla Bryson’ scandal, in which a male rapist was placed in a women’s prison. While she devoted time and political capital to this deeply divisive cause, she dismissed as ‘invalid’ the concerns of feminists concerned about the implications for vulnerable women of Sturgeon’s Estella politics of identity.
The Bitter End: Scandals and Ruin
“I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment, I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high.” - Miss Havisham’s end in Great Expectations is rich in the symbolism of remorse after having realised the damage she had done
Miss Havisham ultimately perishes in the flames of her own decaying mansion. Nicola Sturgeon’s downfall was certainly less dramatic but no less humiliating. Some of us had for years written articles for Think Scotland arguing there were financial questions to answer in SNP accounting. And sure enough, the SNP’s finances became the subject of a major fraud investigation by Police Scotland. Operation Branchform, an investigation into the alleged mismanagement of £600,000 in donations earmarked for the second independence referendum which never emerged. The scandal led to high-profile arrests including her now ex-husband Peter Murrell (former SNP chief executive). Combined with mounting failures in governance, the controversy, compiled with the ‘Isla Bryson’ scandal, shattered her once-unassailable image.
Meanwhile the blight of child poverty in Scotland has risen throughout the SNP’s administration of Scotland from 21 per cent in 2007 to 24 per cent in 2024. 240,000 children in Scotland live below the poverty line with 70 per cent of these children being in households where at least one person is employed. As Sturgeon resigned amid scandal and disgrace, employment alone was not sufficient to lift families out of the poverty her First Ministership ignored in favour of the unfulfilled dream of separation and rhetorical exceptionalism.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Wasted Time
Miss Havisham’s tragedy was her refusal to move on. Sturgeon’s was the same. Instead of building a modern, dynamic Scotland, she remained fixated on the past, allowing resentment toward Westminster to substitute for actual governance. Like Miss Havisham, clad in a fading wedding dress, in a room with broken clocks all pointing to the same lost moment in time, Sturgeon clung to a grievance that paralyzed her government. Her departure has left the SNP in turmoil, with independence arguably further away than when she took office.
Like Miss Havisham’s crumbling mansion, Sturgeon’s Scotland remains trapped in limbo—haunted by lost dreams, burdened by mismanagement, and waiting for a future that never comes.
What a waste of time. A good deal of silence from the former First Minister is advisable.
Dean M Thomson is currently a lecturer with Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, United International College (UIC).
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Brilliant - thanks for the parallel narrative.