The twilight of Nicola Sturgeon – J.K. Rowling reviews Frankly – J.K. Rowling
Like vampires who attempt to blend in undetectably with regular humans, successful politicians must understand the public mood, if only to mimic or manipulate it. Neither group can afford to slip out of touch with the real-life concerns of normal people. The lifeblood of politics is connection, feigned or sincere. You have to understand, or pretend to, the hopes and fears animating the populace you re supposed to be serving.
If, like gorgeous, muscular-chested Edward Cullen, you re a Good Vampire an ethical hunter determined to do no harm to humans you won t sneer at ordinary mortals well-founded instinct for danger. You won t persecute women for being afraid, or for wishing to defend themselves. You ll be self-aware enough to know that you have powers and protections they don t.
By this standard, Nicola Sturgeon, unlike the eventually undead Bella Swan, isn t a Good Vampire at all. She s caused real, lasting harm by presiding over and encouraging a culture in which women have been silenced, shamed, persecuted and placed in situations that are degrading and unsafe, all for not subscribing to her own luxury beliefs.
So I d like to suggest a more fitting epigraph for Frankly, one I feel represents its subject s career far better than the words of Eleanor Roosevelt. Spoken by a solipsistic fictional teenager, but just as appropriate coming from the mouth of an arrogant woman of fifty-five who continues to believe the problem is always the wicked enemies who refuse to view matters her way:
Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.
Stephenie Meyer
Twilight