(Or/ Nicola and Niccolo)

In February 2023 Nicola Sturgeon resigned after eight years as First Minister of Scotland. She was described as hard-working, patriotic, passionate and sincere and I don’t doubt that she is possessed of all these virtues. A majority of Scots were of the opinion that Scotland was better for having had her as First Minister. But one should look at her career from a number of perspectives including that of Vladimir Putin. From his point of view she is a bit of a dream girl notwithstanding her resolute condemnation of him. It is not just that she has posed the greatest threat or promise of the break-up of the United Kingdom, something he would like not only from a practical point of view, but also as vengeance. It is also that she has espoused a version of the erosion of gender identities and roles which enables him to point to the west and say, in effect, “Look what western so-called freedom leads to – a decadent and meaningless world”. This, of course, is of benefit to many other non-western leaders.

There is an important philosophical point here. I don’t wish to express a view on the gender issue itself, but only to require that we acknowledge its effects. Being good – including Nicola Sturgeon’s acknowledged virtues – is not the same as doing good. For centuries the only political writer who truly understood this was Niccolo Machiavelli and he was widely regarded as wicked for pointing out the obvious. Utilitarian political philosophy also recognises this distinction and often then goes on to distinguish between private affairs where doing good is usually close to being good and public affairs where it often isn’t. This distinction can be replaced by one of scale: in small, local situations doing and being good are usually the same, but the link weakens as the scale increases. In either case it is important to acknowledge that doing what you believe to be fundamentally right or fair can sometimes do immense harm.

Lincoln Allison February 2023