According to Google, the most searched-for phrase halfway through Britain's televised election debate on April 2nd was "Nicola Sturgeon". The combative chief of the separatist Scottish National Party (SNP), though unfamiliar to many English voters, was making light work of the leaders of their main political parties. By the end, "Can I vote for the SNP?" was also trending-further evidence that she had impressed many south of the border. So has Ms Sturgeon any plans to put forward candidates in England? "Despite the temptations and encouragement, no," she says, seated in a box-room at the snp's functional headquarters. Not even to mark the 700th anniversary of the siege of Carlisle, in 1315, a famous Scottish assault on the English border city? The normally rather flinty leader emits a sound that is almost a giggle: "Don't tempt me." On the shelves behind her are mementoes of the snp's remarkable rise-from an irrelevant party in the 1960s, to one that may soon be Britain's third biggest-and her own. "She's got Scotland's oil" reads an old snp advert, depicting Margaret Thatcher as a vampire, the black stuff dripping from her teeth. It is a reminder of what Ms Sturgeon calls the "disgust at what the Thatcher-led Tory government was doing" that first recruited her to the party.
展开▼
