Crowding Around Sturgeon

Crowding Around Sturgeon refers to a series of pictures of First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon being crowded alongside the 35 elected Scottish National Party MPs from the 57th Parliament of the United Kingdom in the lobby outside the House of Commons in the Palace of Westminster having a series of interviews with the media.

Origin

In the aftermath of the UK government being defeated in their European Union Withdrawal Agreement on January 15, 2019. The First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon travelled down to London to meet her MPs. On January 16, 2019, she was interviewed by BBC News and Sky News on her opinion of the UK government's defeat.

While having the interviews, the 35 Scottish National Party MPs rallied behind Nicola Sturgeon which became subject to various memes shortly afterwards.

Spread

On January 6, 2019, after the interview, Twitter user Matthew O'Toole tweeted a screen cap of the interview and compared it to the interviews that appear on Antiques Roadshow.

Nicola Sturgeon appears to be on the antiques roadshow pic.twitter.com/NsuwgQStm2

— Matthew O'Toole (@MatthewOToole2) January 16, 2019

After posting the tweet, many others started to post their own tweets with the same screen cap.

Breaking: Lulu Unhappy With Backing Singers. pic.twitter.com/AVGgNSQxhr

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) January 16, 2019

why does nicola sturgeon look like she's presenting transfer deadline day from stoke pic.twitter.com/m5ncfznlyY

— ibrahim salha (@ibzo) January 16, 2019

Nicola Sturgeon & SNP – Shut up (Stormzy Cover) pic.twitter.com/fijiPhmB2G

— Glenn Mitchell (@GlennDMitchell) January 17, 2019

(X Factor voiceover guy)

“Nicola Sturgeon and the Over 25s” pic.twitter.com/glnnCA9JBh

— mnrrnt2 and 206 others (@mnrrntt) January 16, 2019

pic.twitter.com/irwhH52CPT

— James (@outoflondon) January 16, 2019

Response

Media outlet Indy100 had wrote an article of the meme and added tweets relating to the interview snapshots in response to the meme.

Nicola Sturgeon responded to one of the tweets posted in which comedian David Baddiel compared Sturgeon to Lulu and her backup singers. She responded back to the tweet by jokingly saying 'you would not want to hear me sing.'

You definitely do NOT want to hear me sing 😂

— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) January 16, 2019

Criticism

Scottish Conservative politicians Ross Thomson MP and Miles Brigg MSP added a picture and GIFs of the Muppets along with a snapshot of the Sky News interview and received criticism from party politicians and members of the public, branding him as 'childish', 'immature' and 'wrong' after making the post an attack towards Nicola Sturgeon rather than being humorous.