Marysoll Obviously, I can’t speak for others, but my view on some possible reasons, as an English person who lived in Scotland for several years, including during the Indy campaign and vote, and the Brexit referendum, without once being on the receiving end of any anti-English sentiments. I’m now living in England.
It’s long, sorry. And apologies for typos, I’m on my phone and in a hurry.
Until the recent SNP election, I doubt 9 out of 10 English people could have named any other SNP MSPs, and very few SNP MPs, so Sturgeon was very much the focus for any dislike/distrust of SNP policies.
I know the three other main parties brief against the SNP, and the SNP briefs against them. But in England the messaging from all three , particularly the government, is anti-Sturgeon (because they are/were afraid of her influence on both sides of the border), anti-SNP, and anti-Scottish government, in that order. And in England, they have a receptive media, selectively reporting on Scotland.
The media in England is staunchly unionist, and both selective in what it portrays of Sturgeon, and regularly slighting - however subtly - in its language about her.
Scottish government decisions are only reported if they are in any way controversial, or can be spun that way. They are always then presented as Sturgeon (or at a push the SNP, whose leader Nicola Sturgeon) pushing her (radical, divisive) ideas, with no mention of the processes that take place to get laws onto the books in Scotland.
There is, whenever possible, a ‘she’s sneering at England’ angle, where England should read ‘Westminster government’, and where it’s rarely true, or is simply the by-product of Holyrood (not Sturgeon) putting in place legislation it believes works best for Scotland.
I think there is a lot of misogyny involved (for individuals as well as some media) and a genuine dislike of powerful women amongst some.
Gransnet isn’t, of course, typical or representative of England. I’m not denying Sturgeon is divisive in England, but anecdotally, I think there are fewer anti-Sturgeon folk in the wider population than there are here, despite all the above.
Certainly whenever she appears in person.on TV here, and people can hear her without media filters, in real life and on social media (and I have a tedious number of accounts, used for gauging views across a wide political spectrum) the reaction is that she is politically savvy, articulate, intelligent and head and shoulders above any English politician - to the delight of many, the envy of more, and the fury of the right-wing.