By Editor,Euan McColm

Copyright dailymail

You’ll never have to wait long to hear former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon quoting Robert Burns.

She scatters the poet’s most famous verses throughout campaigns, speeches and debates, often twisting them to fit her agenda.

To listen to her, one might be forgiven for thinking of Burns the Nationalist rather than the national bard.

During her time in power, Ms Sturgeon frequently turned to Burns, posting his work online and depending on his canon for some of her most effective attack lines.

Many Scots may have cringed at the time, but when the ex-SNP leader –now peddling her memoir Frankly in a series of interviews – accused Boris Johnson of being a ‘cowrin, tim’rous beastie’ for refusing to grant a second referendum, independence supporters roared their support. That description of Mr Johnson comes, of course, from Burns’s To a Mouse.

Ms Sturgeon might benefit from studying another of the poet’s great works.

Almost 250 years ago, Burns wrote of the curse of a lack of self-awareness. If only, he lamented in To a Louse, we were able ‘to see oursels as ithers see us!’

As Ms Sturgeon marches on in the quest to flog books, she displays precisely the problem her hero identified.

While performing self- reflection in interviews – maybe she could have done this differently, perhaps she was a little too cautious about that – she has continued to attack and traduce those who opposed her politics, using her book tour as a score-settling exercise.

On Monday night, she pitched up in Aberdeen where, in front of an adoring crowd, she nurtured her rancour and doubled down on why she was right and everyone else was wrong. Truly, it must be exhausting to be so deeply misunderstood.

On the matter of trans rights, Ms Sturgeon declared that Scotland had ‘collectively lost its mind’. Perhaps it’s some self-protection mechanism that prevents her from considering the possibility that the losing of minds has occurred with her and those who share her desire to dismantle women’s rights in order to accede to trans activists’ extreme demands.

But while Ms Sturgeon may comfort herself that this is an ‘all of us’ problem, those who don’t share her goal of changing the law to allow anyone to self-identify into the legally recognised sex of their choosing outnumber her supporters three-to-one.

She is among a dwindling minority who believe humans can magically change sex.

Entertainingly, Ms Sturgeon claimed on Monday she ‘respected’ those who disagree with her on the subject.

Opponents branded by her during the heat of the self-ID debate as bigots, homophobes, and even racists, may disagree.

The utter chaos Ms Sturgeon caused with her monomaniacal crusade continues, more than two years after the public backlash against plans – blocked by former Scottish Secretary Alister Jack – to reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) contributed to her decision to quit as First Minister.

The tribunal case of Sandie Peggie – a nurse of 30 years service currently suing NHS Fife and trans-identifying doctor Beth Upton for discrimination and harassment – has thrown into sharp focus the madness of Ms Sturgeon’s obsession.

Ms Peggie’s claim that she should not have been expected to share a changing room with someone born male has received a groundswell of public support which makes Ms Sturgeon look detached and unthinking.

While the majority remain in favour of women’s rights based on biology rather than feelings, and are opposed to the entrance into women’s single-sex spaces by those born male, the former FM’s belief that she is right remains unshakeable.

On Monday night, questioned about the balance between the rights of women and trans people, Ms Sturgeon said she would ‘never accept’ they were in conflict.

What a lack of intellectual curiosity. When the ex-SNP leader began, almost a decade ago, to agitate for legislative change based on the demands of trans activists, she may have been able to plead ignorance of the consequences.

At that time, the view that self-ID would do no more than make life easier for a deeply persecuted minority was widely held.

The mantra ‘be kind’ – repeated mindlessly by political leaders from across the spectrum who hadn’t taken time to think about the reality of what they were supporting – was in the air. In the years since, the problems with self-ID have become clear.

Along with the Sandie Peggie tribunal, the case of rapist Adam Graham – sent to a women’s jail after self-identifying as a woman named Isla Bryson – the harassment and abuse of feminists daring to declare the importance of biological sex, and scandals across the public sector, such as the decision (now overturned) by National Librarian Amina Shah to ban the gender-critical book The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht from a major exhibition, have combined to cement public opinion against GRA reform.

Most Scots assuredly have not lost their minds when it comes to the demands of trans activists. Most Scots reject them, completely.

That the avalanche of evidence showing why self-ID is a very bad idea has passed Ms Sturgeon by is quite remarkable.

But it is not solely in the area of gender reform where Ms Sturgeon displayed a troubling lack of self-awareness on Monday evening.

The former SNP leader, who campaigned amid a sea of Saltires, complained about the politicisation of flags.

Ms Sturgeon is an arsonist complaining about an outbreak of fires.

Reform leader Nigel Farage is, of course, the villain in the touring pantomime of her book tour. On Monday, she again criticised Mr Farage’s ‘brittle ego’.

At once, the head nods along with that assessment and shakes at Ms Sturgeon’s inability to recognise just how fragile is her own armour.

The political graveyard is littered with the rotting careers of Nationalist politicians who dared not show complete obedience to her while she was in power.

Before suggesting Mr Farage should retire, Ms Sturgeon told the audience in Aberdeen she was worried about the ‘normalisation in this country of far-Right language and rhetoric and attitudes and opinions’.

It was important, she said, for politicians on the Left to explain to voters that they understand current financial pressures and the temptation to turn to right-wingers such as Mr Farage.

And then the zinger.

What Mr Farage was offering by way of a solution to the challenges people face was ‘snake oil’. That was quite the charge from one of the great snake oil saleswomen of modern politics.

Mr Farage’s claims about public finances and economic growth are no more fanciful than those made by the SNP in the 2014 independence referendum White Paper – 670 pages of guesswork and supposition.

Ms Sturgeon and Mr Farage are Nationalist populists whose secession projects offer simple solutions to complex problems. Both invite us to push the big red button for instant fixes all round. The similarities between the two are many.

If only Ms Sturgeon had the ability to see herself as others see her, she might realise that.