I have no experience with SonarQube. I guess it's like a linter that's slightly higher level? In that case I'd guess the appeal is that it's reducing the cost of often repeated analysis that is usually done manually, not that the tool itself would make your code great to read.
If that's what it is then I think such tools are "a good servant but a bad master". It does not replace manual analysis, but can be used well to reduce costs of removing common code smells. It still requires a human to work as a judge.
I agree with you there - but this makes it even more bizarre that there are now tools (e.g. SonarQube) trying to automate this analysis. Of course, linters are a undeniably useful, but stuffing arbitrary rules into a tool which then gives grades to your code based on a strict interpretation of those rules is a bridge too far. I mean, can you really take software that uses terms like "blocker code smell" seriously?!