It’s been just over 24 hours since Nicola Sturgeon’s bombshell resignation and the fallout has already begun.
As worldwide tributes to Scotland’s longest serving first minister pour in, Donald Trump has spared a moment to bid “good riddance” to a “failed woke extremist”.
“This crazed leftist symbolises everything wrong with identity politics,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, taking particular issue with her decision “to put a biological man in a women’s prison.”
While Sturgeon is unlikely to be fazed by the words of the blustering former US president, she has reason to be concerned about the potential fallout emerging on her home turf.
Michael Russell, the SNP president, has warned against infighting, as debate over the party’s next strategy for independence looks set to intensify.
Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation may well prompt a major rethink around her plans to fight the next UK general election as a de facto referendum on independence.
Party members were set to gather in Edinburgh next month for the party’s ‘special democracy conference’ to decide a way the best way forward for a second independence referendum – an event Sturgeon planned to use to gain support for her proposal.
Yet now, SNP figures resistant to her plan to treat the next election as a de facto referendum seem keen to put the conference on hold.
Stephen Flynn, who replaced Sturgeon loyalist Ian Blackford as SNP Westminster leader back in December and has since criticised Sturgeon’s “de facto referendum” strategy, has called for the conference to be postponed until after a leader has been chosen. “I think it’s sensible that we do hit the pause button on that conference and allow the new leader the opportunity to set out their vision,” he reasoned.
Similarly, Stewart McDonald, the SNP’s former defence spokesperson and another figure to speak out against the “de facto referendum”, has insisted the party “should not rush” the choice of leader and should allow around six weeks to allow for a “comprehensive debate”. (The committee will hold an emergency meeting this evening to thrash out the timeline of the leadership contest.)
Yet some of those who support the outgoing first minister’s election strategy are frustrated, fearing the SNP doesn’t have time on its side. Pete Wishart, one of Sturgeon’s key allies in Westminster, has urged the party not to postpone the conference. “Hope those calling for our conference to be delayed know that they are probably killing the opportunity for the next Westminster referendum to be used as a de facto referendum. There simply won’t be the time to organise if there’s any significant delay,” he vented.
Wishart has every reason to fear a delay. Even before Sturgeon threw in the towel, his party’s ratings were falling. While the SNP enjoyed ratings in the high 40s or low 50s for much of the period after the December 2019 election and throughout the pandemic, in 2022 the figures started to fall, touching 42% in April and 41% in November. The latest monthly average puts the SNP on 43%, with Labour on 30%, the Conservatives on 16% and the Liberal Democrats on 6%.
What’s more, according to Peter Kellner, the former president of YouGov, Labour could be about to surge in Scotland. While the Labour Party dominated Scottish politics for decades, it currently holds just one seat in Scotland to the SNP’s 48. Yet Kellner predicted today that the fallout caused by Sturgeon’s resignation could see Keir Starmer’s party secure as many as 20 seats in Scotland at the next general election.
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