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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week we pick a few of our writers to read out their pieces for you.

This week we've got Alex Massey, the Spectator's Scotland

editor reading his cover piece about the Sturgeon paradox, how she becomes more popular

despite doing ever worse. Then we have Paul Wood looking at what happens in the Middle East

after Trump goes, and at the very end, Melissa Kite on why she regrets endorsing Boris Johnson. First up, it's Alex

Massey. Before COVID-19, if you can remember such a time, this was supposed to be a difficult year

for Nicola Sturgeon. Her party had been in power in Edinburgh since 2007, and like all ministries

of such antiquity, was beginning to look jaded.

There was never any doubt that she would remain First Minister following next year's

Holyrood elections, but the prospect of her winning a majority seemed to be receding.

Opposition parties believed that a relentless focus on the SMP's record in office would

be enough to clip Sturgeon's

wings. After 13 years, it was hard to point to many stunning successes. On the contrary,

failures and scandals were accumulating. Time ruins all governments, and hers did not seem to be an

exception. But, as 2020 has shown, normal rules do not apply to

Nicola Sturgeon. The virus changed everything. Now, she is arguably Britain's most popular politician,

more popular in England than Boris Johnson, according to one poll, and her stock in Scotland

has never been higher. Opinion polls

suggest the next Holyrood Parliament will be cursed with a pro-independence majority. The future

of the United Kingdom once again hangs in the balance. And to save it, unionists need to work out

why. Rarely has a discrepancy between perception and performance been so stark.

...