Hillary Clinton can learn from Nicola Strugeon the lesson of beating her insecurities

It was not quite supposed to be like this for Mrs Clinton. Mr Sanders, age 74 to Mrs Clinton’s relatively spring-chicken-like 68, was meant to have been pushed out of the way a long time ago by the all-powerful Clinton election machine. Yet now he moves on to New Hampshire next Tuesday the favourite to win that bout. One opinion poll has him 29 points ahead. Lest one wants to rush in here with a health warning that there are 25.5 miles in this marathon yet to run, and that Mrs Clinton will easily triumph once the race gets going proper, remember the strange political times in which we live. These are AC/DC days, After Corbyn and During Corbyn, when what was once regarded as surreal can become real.

Little wonder, then, that the boys and girls in the Clinton New York office are getting on buses for New Hampshire, and another contingent is setting the sat-nav for South Carolina for the February 27 caucus. Even though Iowa counts for little in the grand electoral scheme of things (one per cent of delegates at the national conventions), it is best not to take any chances this early on. Ask Donald Trump, who has gone from hot air balloon to burst baw overnight.

Seasoned political operator that she is, new grandmother Clinton hardly needs to be enrolled in egg-sucking school. Though she could make history if she wins, other women around the world have beaten her to the top spot. At the last UN count, there were 21 women heads of state or government in the world. But 21 out of almost 200 states is still a tiny handful, and certainly not enough for anyone to take a female politician’s ascent for granted, no matter how capable she might appear to be. That being so, Mrs Clinton might be in the market for a little sisterly advice. And on the annoying but true grounds that one can always learn something from younger generations, she could do worse than have a glance at the Nicola Sturgeon Silver Linings Playbook.

Ms Sturgeon has yet to win an election in her own, official First-Minister right, but anyone who dismisses her impact on the 2015 General Election victory has to be a couple of votes short of a majority. There are perhaps three areas of the Sturgeon phenomenon worth looking at if any of those Clinton boys and girls on the bus have a moment between tweeting and sleeping.

First, there is the clear, simple, compelling narrative, the back story that every politician requires in the modern media age. Ms Sturgeon’s is so minimalist it could be a haiku. Joined her party at 16, worked her way through the ranks, served a long time as a deputy. Mrs Clinton’s narrative, in contrast, is more like War and Peace with the Argos catalogue thrown in for good measure. Her story is a sprawling jumble of events and people, some of them advantageous to her, others not so much, a few of them both things at the same time. Take the other half, for example. Most Democrat politicians running for office would kill to have Bill Clinton’s advice, but no-one would want some of the, shall we call it baggage, that comes with him. Mrs Clinton, though she is an equal force in the partnership, will always be open to the charge that she journeyed to prominence on his coat-tails. She has even found her feminist credentials questioned by younger women voters who don’t hold by any of that Tammy Wynette, standing-by-your-man stuff. There is little Mrs Clinton can do about Mr Clinton’s past. She once made standing by him work in his favour; now she has to do the same thing again, this time to help herself.

So much for narrative. Mrs Clinton might find happier common ground with Scotland’s First Minister when it comes to tailoring her radicalism to fit the more cautious times, as seen most obviously this week by the way Ms Sturgeon sprinted away from a tax rise like Usain Bolt in heels. Facing an opponent who has made much of her Establishment links and big money ties to Wall Street, Mrs Clinton finds herself having to talk up her Leftish credentials while not frightening the horses. She appeared to have found a way to do this when she declared herself to be “a progressive who actually likes to make progress”. It is a formulation that might appeal increasingly to Ms Sturgeon if she finds herself under pressure from all those new, emboldened party members impatient for radical change.

There is a third area where the Sturgeon Silver Linings Playbook might offer hope. It is a sensitive one, and one that is depressing, in seemingly more enlightened times, to have to address, yet it must be done. Every politician standing for office comes under a tremendous amount of personal scrutiny. But with female politicians it is open season from the off. Take the number of personal comments made about male politicians and treble it for women. Watch all the old double standards roar into play. A man can be decisive but a woman is always bossy. A man can stand up for himself but a woman is a nippy sweetie. Any of this sounding familiar? Mrs Clinton, like the First Minister in earlier days, does not come across as a naturally gregarious, hail-fellow-well-met, clubbable sort. There is a shyness there, despite all the years she has spent in the public eye. Granted, she came out of her shell in the 2008 race but it was too late. She retreated back into it when she became Secretary of State. Today, the best thing she can do is what Ms Sturgeon did: get out there, keep meeting people. She might find she likes it, and, crucially, that they like her right back.

Will she do it? It is probably her last chance to do so. For all their differences, Scotland’s First Minister and the former First Lady who would be the first woman President of the US have one fundamental thing in common. Like many a woman who ever ran for political office, who ever did anything that mattered, both know the toughest opponent is often the one they see in the mirror each morning. Beat her insecurities and a woman’s work is halfway done.