Alison Rowat: Now is the time for Nicola Sturgeon to seize the day and be bold

Strangely enough, it was John Major who sauntered across the mental horizon. The-then Tory prime minister was cast away to the fictional island in January 1992, a big fish guest to mark the programme’s 50th anniversary, and one of his choices was Frank Sinatra and Count Basie giving their all to The Best is Yet to Come. Mr Major did indeed win the General Election months later but, after that victory, came five years of Hades on wheels, including Black Wednesday, Back to Basics, and splits over Europe.

Is Scotland’s First Minister destined to live in similarly “interesting times”, or will she be back next year at the Scottish Politician of the Year awards, like some one-woman Real Madrid, to lift another trophy?

As is frequently noted in the small print of financial ads, past performance is not an indicator of future results, but it is as reasonable a place as any to start. Ms Sturgeon’s first year in the job can usefully be summed up by the three Rs. No, we are not talking about her record on closing the attainment gap between pupils from poor backgrounds and the rest, though we shall come to that later. We refer to the three Rs of politics: ruthlessness, runaround, and ratings.

First, ruthlessness. While Ms Sturgeon may have hung around for an uncommonly long time as a deputy, she has shown a pleasing tendency to get a wriggle on since taking office, particularly in the pruning of dead wood. Several of the old crowd have found themselves surplus to requirements, yet none has subsequently caused her problems, as toppled colleagues are wont to do. It is too early in the life of her administration, and she is too popular, to worry about such things. She could fill the backbenches at Holyrood with disgruntled colleagues and still be in little danger.

Having scored the biggest SNP win ever at a general election, she is for now unassailable, enjoying popularity with the party, sections of the press and the public. Now ought to be the time for boldness, something the party has shied away from so far, but it remains to be seen how the leadership will react to Chancellor George Osborne’s spending review next week. If he does not relent sufficiently on tax credit cuts, will the Scottish Government match Labour’s pledge to reverse the measures? If it does not, Labour will harry the SNP on the matter from now until next June.

Next comes runaround, the giving of. Through cheeky raids on such territories as fox-hunting, NHS reforms in England and next week a vote on Trident, the SNP at Westminster has made its presence as a third force felt. While Her Majesty’s official opposition has been disappearing up its own lobby, the SNP MPs have been making enough noise to stand out. This is sufficient to keep the troops back home, deprived of another referendum, happy for now.

Finally, ratings. Though her predecessor was no slouch on the publicity front, Ms Sturgeon makes Alex Salmond look like Garbo with a migraine. Her stealing of the show during the televised General Election debates, her trips to China, the United States (complete with Jon Stewart sit-down), that photoshoot with Vogue – the FM has seemed to be everywhere, flying the Saltire as she goes. As she ends a year in which a poll found her more popular than the Queen and Andy Murray, it is time to put away the passport and glad rags. There is such a thing as too much exposure, even for a politician. And, of course, there is the day job to be getting on with.

Which brings us to another R: reality check. Ms Sturgeon has asked to be judged on her ability to close the attainment gap in education. She will be. She will also be judged on NHS performance and spending, Police Scotland, her stance on fracking, cuts to college places, standards of literacy and much else. The SNP in government has raised three-wise-monkeys managerialism to an art form but in time the public will tire of this “see no evil, hear no evil, but have a good old moan about the Tories at Westminster” routine.

Leadership, as Ms Sturgeon acknowledged on Desert Island Discs, can be a tough, lonely business. Though she said nothing could really prepare a person for that first big test, she felt “quite comfortable” with decision making. “I’m prepared to live with the consequences. There is something in me that has managed to convince myself I’ve got what it takes to be a leader.”

It is in that context that her shifting position on Syria should be seen. It was only last month that she led the opposition to air strikes on Syria at her party’s conference, saying they risked adding to “the already unimaginable human suffering”. Yesterday, however, she said she was “prepared to listen” to Prime Minister David Cameron’s case. “Given what is happening, what has happened, I think it would be irresponsible not to do that,” she told BBC Scotland. "But I think it is incumbent on the Prime Minister, if he is going to bring a proposal for air strikes to the House of Commons, that he makes that case and he addresses that case to these key points.”

After the horrors of Paris, the momentum on Syria is gathering to an extent that should give us all, politician or not, pause for serious thought. “We’re going to war,” a Cabinet minister told the BBC. The tone in which this was said was not related. Was such a declaration made in a gung-ho way or mournfully? One would not, for all the awards in the world, want to be in a position to decide whether fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, aunties and uncles, are sent off to war. The best that any politician can do is to weigh the evidence in the absolute, serious knowledge that lives depend on it. In the face of decisions such as these, all else is of secondary importance, anniversaries most of all. As the First Minister knows more than most, it is not what happened yesterday that matters, that is fixed in the cement of history. It is what happens over the next five or 365 days that counts.