End of the line for Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon has resigned as Scotland’s First Minister, firing the starting gun on the race to replace her and throwing the future of the independence cause into doubt.

During a hastily arranged resignation speech in Edinburgh this morning, Scotland’s longest serving First Minister stunned the world with her decision to step down from the “very best job in the world”, after “wrestling” with the question of her future for weeks.

The embattled SNP leader insisted her resignation is “not a reaction to short-term pressures” but rather, the result of a “deeper and longer-term assessment”. Sturgeon will stand down once a successor has been appointed but intends to stay in parliament serving her constituency until the next election.

The parallels with the resignation speech of Jacinda Ardern – New Zealand’s former prime minister who announced her sudden decision to step down last month – were evident. 

Just as Ardern did, Sturgeon made a virtue of her choice to quit of her own accord. “I’m proud that I know when it’s time to move on,” she declared. And much like Ardern, she was at pains to stress that the job had taken its toll on her physical and mental health, since politicians are human too.

Yet this narrative felt like a cop out when she was later grilled over her record. “I’m a human being. Of course I’ve got regrets about all sorts of things,” came her wishy-washy response, when asked if she had “regrets” over Scotland’s overwhelmed health service and her failure to close the poverty-related attainment gap, despite stating in 2015 that she wished to be judged on her ability to achieve just this. 

Speaking of records, Sturgeon also leaves office as Scotland expands its lead as the drug deaths capital of Europe, with deaths three times higher than in England. 

In recent months, Sturgeon has faced a fresh set of political setbacks, most notably over her controversial attempt to reform Scotland’s gender recognition laws. It prompted mutiny in her own ranks, and subsequently left her tying herself in knots over whether she believes trans rapist Isla Bryson to be male or female. 

Sturgeon has also comie under pressure following controversy over her husband‘s loan to the SNP. Her husband, Peter Murrell, is chief Executive of the SNP and lent the party £107,000. There is also an ongoing police investigation into whether £600,000 of SNP money which was ring-fenced for independence campaigning was diverted elsewhere in 2021.

Yet perhaps most crucially of all, her lifelong nationalist dream of Scottish independence appears more distant than ever.

A decisive ruling back in November from the UK Supreme Court – that the Scottish government cannot hold a second independence referendum without the permission of Westminster – has left the SNP desperately lacking a strategy. Sturgeon’s flawed Plan B – to turn the next general election into a de facto referendum – has even been rejected by much of her own party. 

Sturgeon, 52, who took over from Alex Salmond after independence was rejected by a majority of Scotland’s voters in 2014, will likely be remembered by many within the SNP as the most successful leader in the party’s history. Indeed, she has delivered a string of landslide election victories for the SNP and, as she bragged today, enjoys approval ratings after eight years in government that “most leaders would give their right arm for”.

But ultimately she has failed on her mission aim. While she has managed to keep the nationalist flame burning following the 2014 vote, as she leaves office, her party is nowhere near getting the sustained level of support required for independence. In fact, the latest opinion poll shows independence rejected by a margin of 12 points (56 per cent to 44 per cent), a larger rejection of separatism than at the 2014 vote.

Today, as ever, the outgoing First Minister refused to admit that the cause she believes in “with every fibre of [her] being” is on shaky ground. Instead she set her successor a herculean task,  insisting she “firmly believes” that whoever replaces her “will lead Scotland to independence.” 

Whatever happens next at Holyrood will be fascinating to watch. Labour, and even the Tories, will be plotting ways to wipe out the SNP-led coalition’s slender majority at the next election.

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