Don’t rush for tickets on Nicola Sturgeon’s farewell tour

Nicola Sturgeon’s valedictory address to the RSA was her ‘And now we turn to the liars…’ speech. The outgoing SNP leader’s remarks were nominally about inequality and climate change but she was really there to talk about the distorting impact of social media on democratic politics. Given her departure was possibly hastened by the pushback against her Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which saw women’s rights campaigners and others organise via social media, it’s understandable that the First Minister would feel a little irked by these disruptively democratic platforms. 

The ‘nature of the discourse’, Sturgeon opined, was ‘undermining our ability… to address the big issues’. The ‘damage’ social media was doing to democracy globally was outweighing the benefits. This is the new orthodoxy among political elites, who have gone from gushing over the opportunities of digital democracy and open societies to fretting that such things have become rather too democratic and too open.