I wonder about the class element. Lots of English lefties, not so very long ago, hated the SNP. I have an instinct more than a theory that the English left has mostly got rid of its working class element and become a vehicle for the self-interest of the PMC class, and they now recognise their own in the SNP.
I think sometimes about how the old SNP was a collection of warring factions and personalities only held together by the bigger cause, and how that's a metaphor for there being lots of different communities in a nation, and you flatten that out at your peril.
There were things that used to prevent the SNP from being naice. There were ideological crusaders. There was a very socially conservative rural element that used to be important (I remember, when she was in the European Parliament, Winnie Ewing struck up this odd couple friendship with Ian Paisley, and they were very effective when they worked together)
And there was definitely an element of the SNP base that was demographically and attitudinally similar to UKIP voters down south. To listen to Sturgeon you would think that all Scots were fanatical Remainers. You would not guess that 38% of Scots and a similar proportion of SNP voters voted Leave. I wonder where those Reform votes we're starting to see in Scotland come from. It would not surprise me if lots of them were former SNP voters.
A smarter and less vain leader would have recognised all this and worked with it. But she tried to remake the party and even the country to flatter her self-image, and look at the outcome.
But I suppose it got her into respectable society, and that's the main thing.