Nicola Sturgeon

Yesterday, following the widely covered announcement of Alex Salmond's new Alba party, those who listened very closely would have heard two distinct sounds: a pained groan and a jubilant celebration. For the SNP, it was a knife thrust deep into their back, and for Unionists, it was the joy of watching an enemy devour itself. Alba's hype — that it will somehow game the system and end up with an unchallengeable majority — is the ravings of a vindictive and ego-driven man high on his own supply. 

Time is a unique concept; it is a variable constant that has come to dominate everyone's lives on this planet. Be it by the sun's movement and the need to care for cattle or the morning commute to your 9-5 job, time impacts us all, but we experience it in different ways.

One concept is that of time dilation, where the passage of time is different in two bodies depending on the velocity at which they travel; think of the masterful movie Interstellar, where the protagonist in space experiences time much slower than his daughter on earth so that when they meet again, he seems not to have aged at all while his daughter is on her death bed from old age. As abstract as this may seem, time dilation is very relevant to politics, especially in a time where our days seem to drag on.

There is a parallel universe where the SNP respects democracy.

In this alternative world in 2014, post referendum, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon acknowledged that two million people in Scotland had voted for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom and that the 10% winning margin —  which meant 24% more people voted NO than YES — was clear and decisive. 

To show their acceptance and heal the wounds of the divisive, “once-in-a-generation” referendum, three days after the referendum, they attended the service of reconciliation which the Church of Scotland had organised at St Giles Cathedral. Salmond and Sturgeon then returned to the Scottish parliament vowing to devote all their energies to the public services of Scotland, to demonstrate the competence of the SNP in government. They spend the next six years on ‘the day job’ improving Scotland’s health, education and economy.

Do you remember, just a few months ago, when statues were being toppled around the world? Men who had been venerated in their time were now exposed as having profited from slavery or other ignominious acts. What was surprising was how quickly it all happened. One day nobody cared; the next statues were being pulled down. How quickly times change.

The esteemed German sociologist Max Weber says leaders, in the past or today, derive their authority from three different sources: legal authority, traditional authority, and charismatic authority.