When Jacinda Ardern resigned as New Zealand’s prime minister a few weeks ago, Nicola Sturgeon assured voters she still had plenty left in the tank. Yet apparently, Scotland’s first minister had been thinking about her own future for some time. She said so in her resignation speech on Wednesday, which came as a surprise to much of Scotland.
Despite a recent and consistent wave of difficulty and controversy over the gender recognition reform bill, the quest for another independence referendum, a finance investigation into the SNP and an ongoing “ferry fiasco”, there was no clear indication that Sturgeon was going to quit.
Having been in parliament since the age of 29 and Scotland’s leader since 2014, Sturgeon is both the first female, and longest serving, first minister. She said she will stay on until her successor is elected. But that successor will inherit a government wrestling with several controversies and constitutional questions.
