Nicola Sturgeon has achieved what politicians around the world dream of. With her resignation announcement, she surprised both political opponents and friends and at least successfully created the impression that everything was happening of her own accord. Scotland’s First Minister has been the dominant figure in politics ‘north of the border’, as they like to say in England, for at least the past eight years. She had previously sat at the center of power in Edinburgh as deputy to her predecessor, Salmond.
As head of government, she was naturally a generalist who had to take care of everything from health care to the economy to social affairs. But basically there was and is only one topic in Nicola Sturgeon’s political thinking that really drives her. She wants to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom.
At the beginning of her term of office in 2014, she was defeated on this issue. The majority of Scots voted to remain in Britain. If the Brexit referendum, in which Scotland voted against leaving the EU, hadn’t intervened, the issue would not have been as virulent today – and Sturgeon might have resigned earlier. Because even under the new circumstances, she admitted quite fairly in her declaration of resignation, that there is still no stable majority for Scottish independence.
No longer undisputed in the party
The First Minister wanted to make the upcoming general election a de facto referendum on independence. She called the central government’s decision not to allow a second referendum on independence undemocratic. But this strategy was not without controversy, even within her own party. She would have run the risk of damaging her leader by making a different decision. Now the SNP will decide on its election strategy at a special party conference in March – and try to strengthen the new leader it has found by then.
The political failure of Sturgeon was actually inevitable for the reasons mentioned. Her confidence, expressed in the declaration of resignation, that her successor would lead Scotland to independence, seemed very artificial. Her recent political defeat may have determined the exact timing of her resignation. The transgender law, which was not only passed with the votes of the SNP, was not allowed to come into force after a veto from London.
Independence issues aside, Nicola Sturgeon’s political record is not bad. In the corona pandemic, the major crisis of her tenure, she cut a relatively good figure, although of course she made mistakes. However, the positive impression is not only their merit. Looking serious and good next to a political player type like then London Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not that difficult.
Whoever succeeds Sturgeon must present the electorate with a political platform that goes beyond a call for independence.
