First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaking during a press conference where she announced she will stand down as First Minister of Scotland
(Picture: PA Wire)As the sun rose over Calton Hill above Edinburgh on the misty morning of September 19 2014 the dream of Scottish independence lay shattered.
Scots had voted decisively to stay part of the United Kingdom.
The party atmosphere, and high hopes, of the night before, had vanished.
A few stragglers remained but the vast majority of those who had joined the vigil to see in Scottish independence had left to get some desperately needed sleep, some nursing painful hangovers.
Later that morning, Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond called for “unity” in his bitterly divided nation.
The vote had pitted families, neighbours, work colleagues and communities against each other.
By the time all the votes were counted, some two million had stood firm against breaking up the union, but more than 1.6 had put a cross in for independence.
While this was a major setback for the Scottish National Party it was far from giving up.
It did not take long to start piecing back together that dream of independence.
With Salmond unable to lead the SNP to independence, his more charismatic successor Nicola Sturgeon took over the baton as the nation remained broadly divided along the same lines, with some ebbs and flows.
Highly skilled in communications and with political nous, Sturgeon exploited Brexit, with its damage to the UK economy, and other Westminster blunders, to press the case for independence.
A majority of Scots voted to Remain in the EU.
Since 2016 they have been paying the price, as have citizens across the UK, of the vote to Leave which was largely fuelled by English nationalism.
Sturgeon showed her class as a politician when she outshone Boris Johnson during the Covid crisis, even though once the dust settled her record on the pandemic may be similar to his on at least some fronts.
Announcing her planned departure, once a new leader is chosen, she stressed it would allow other talents within the SNP to come to the fore.
But the party will struggle, certainly for a number of years, to boast a leader of her stature.
So, Tory ministers will need to spend less time scuttling northwards to shore up the union.
But they may be heading there instead to stop a Labour revival, possibly no longer so shackled by the SNP’s strength, and which is likely to boost Sir Keir Starmer’s chances of snatching an overall majority at the next General Election.
He may scoop up a bunch of Westminster seats from the SNP, to add to his current dismal tally of just one north of the border.
So, as Sturgeon walks out of her official residence of Bute House for the last time, she can reflect on having led her party to a string of election victories.
But there can be little doubt that her departure snaps off a piece of that dream of independence, at least for the immediate future.
