At times of global conflict, politicians are often tempted to smear domestic opponents as unwitting allies of a foreign aggressor. Whatever the scale of the humanitarian crisis, there is always mileage in accusing others of having the wrong priorities and inadvertently aiding, through policy or propaganda, the common enemy.

Unfair though such accusations often are, it behoves every elected politician in the western world to play their part in presenting a united front, especially now that the global economic effects of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine are being felt more severely each day.

Nicola Sturgeon may have had a “good” pandemic, but she is having a much less comfortable time dealing with the implications of Russian belligerence. Specifically, her devolved government in Edinburgh is so ideologically committed to the green agenda that even a crisis of such overwhelming proportions as we have seen in Ukraine will not dissuade her from her course.

With European nations dependent on Russia for more than a third of its gas supplies, political leaders are frantically searching for alternative sources that will weaken the west’s reliance on an unreliable neighbour. Britain only imports about three per cent of its gas from Russia, but that still means sending Putin’s regime £6 million every day.

The obvious answer is to ramp up exploitation of the North Sea, even if that means a temporary setback for Britain’s move to renewables. Even before the Ukraine crisis, unprecedented global gas prices started to put pressure on household budgets, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. 

However much progress has been made in the last decade in increasing our supply of renewable energy, we remain dependent on fossil fuels to heat homes and work places: only 6.4 per cent of heat demand came from renewables last year.

Yet even as the urgency of divesting Europe of its dependence on Russian gas becomes ever clearer, the SNP government at Westminster sticks stubbornly to its ideological position of opposing new gas and oil fields in the North Sea. That decision, of course, is not theirs but that of the UK government, since energy policy is reserved to Westminster. Yet it is understood that Shell recently pulled out of its planned efforts to explore the new Cambo oil field near Shetland specifically because of political opposition from Edinburgh.

What other sane country would view the current geopolitical crisis and its impact on domestic energy supplies – not only ours but those of our European neighbours – and deliberately reject the obvious solution of turning to our own domestic resources?

While there is doubtlessly an appetite among ordinary British citizens for a move towards sustainable energy sources over time, a combination of soaring household energy bills and the need to buy less Russian gas should have produced a pragmatic Keynesian change of policy: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

But the First Minister cannot change her mind. Partly this is a matter of nationalist politics: having spent decades telling Scots that an independent Scotland would thrive on its North Sea oil resources, Sturgeon has already led her movement to a 180-degree turn, eschewing fossil fuels and promising an independent Scotland would instead be a world leader in renewables. Another U-turn, however short-lived, would be a difficult sell to her party.

But that change of heart has also meant an added political complication. The Scottish Greens, impressed by Sturgeon’s new environmental credentials, joined her government last year. Any sort of return to gas and oil extraction would place new strains on that relationship.

Sturgeon’s best hope is that the UK government comes to her rescue, opening up new fields against her explicit advice. She can then berate her favourite domestic opponent while benefiting politically from the lower domestic gas prices that new supplies would generate.

The First Minister likes nothing better than to show off her European credentials, promising to secure a fast-track to EU membership for a newly independent Scotland. She is much more comfortable, it appears, signalling that the SNP is progressive and good, by apologising for the persecution of witches, then domestic security matters. 

Yet even a criminal incursion by an autocratic regime of a democratic neighbour within Europe’s borders isn’t enough to persuade her to surrender her woke credentials when it comes to energy policy. Virtue signalling her commitment to windmills and solar panels may tick all the right boxes for her domestic supporters, but it will do nothing to persuade President Putin that the west has the determination to stand up to him.