Nicola Sturgeon has resigned as the Scottish National party leader and Scotland’s first minister, signalling the end of a political era and triggering the SNP’s first leadership election campaign in nearly 20 years. After serving as Alex Salmond’s understudy and deputy from 2004, during which time she was the SNP’s leader at Holyrood, she was crowned party leader in 2014 without a contest. Her decision now to quit leaves a number of important questions for the party and for her successor.
Why quit now?
Sturgeon said she was clear “in my head and in my heart” that this was the right time to go. She was drained by the unrelenting and unforgiving pressures of modern politics, she said, with a 24-hour news cycle, the intensity of social media and modern politics’ focus on personality. It was impossible to live a normal life, to go for a walk or meet friends for afternoon tea.
The timing of her decision was largely set for her, she said, by next month’s special SNP conference on deciding its next strategy in the independence campaign. She suggested it would have been dishonest to herself and to her party to chair that event knowing she was minded to quit quite soon.
She insisted that after more than 20 years in frontline politics, she had not been swayed by the latest crises over transgender rights, A&E waiting times, the rolling strikes that have closed every Scottish school, the fury of nurses over their pay offer, or even, she implied, a police investigation into her husband’s private loan of £107,000 to the SNP. Her husband is Peter Murrell, the party’s chief executive.
Yet it was clear by implication that those battles had contributed to, and perhaps even accelerated, her decision. In one telling moment during her press conference, she said that while internal doubts about remaining as first minister had been surfacing for many months, they began to crystallise in early January and had hardened in the last few weeks.
The next Holyrood election – a vote that is of singular significance for the SNP, given it is for Scotland’s national parliament – is more than three years away. Despite her own doubts about her resilience, her government – shared with the pro-independence Scottish Greens – was stable and commanded an unassailable majority.
Yet while Sturgeon has championed many defining policies for Holyrood and the SNP – tackling child poverty through free preschool hours, free school meals and a £20 weekly welfare payment; shifting the burden of Scotland’s taxes on to the wealthy; and widening access to universities – she has left many things undone.
Her successor must tackle the crisis in A&E departments and hospital waiting lists; teachers’ strikes; the underfunding of local government; the mounting attacks on plans for a centralised national care service; and unpopular plans to introduce the UK’s first deposit return scheme for cans and bottles.
Top of her successor’s in-tray will be two key political challenges: the future of the independence campaign, and changes to Scotland’s gender recognition laws. SC
What does her resignation mean for Scottish independence?
Undoubtedly it is a significant setback. Sturgeon has been the campaign’s standard bearer for nearly a decade, directing its strategy and investing the independence vision with her distinctive political agenda.
It is highly significant that Sturgeon directly linked her decision to step down to next month’s SNP conference on independence, in Edinburgh on Sunday 19 March. On a practical level, that conference has to answer one question: since the UK supreme court has ruled definitively that the Scottish parliament cannot hold an independence referendum without Westminster’s approval, should the SNP attempt to use the next UK general election as a de facto referendum on independence? Delegates will also be offered one slight variation on that idea: to use the 2026 Holyrood election as the proxy referendum.
This proposal, widely disparaged by her opponents and many within the SNP, was unveiled as Sturgeon’s plan B when she told Holyrood last year that she would be asking the supreme court to rule on Holyrood’s referendum powers. She had gambled on the court saying yes, and comprehensively lost. Now a slew of opinion polls show the idea is deeply unpopular. Voters are more concerned with the economy, the cost of living and the NHS.
Before her resignation, the conference would have rehearsed familiar arguments, offering Sturgeon an opportunity to maintain the continuity of arguments she has orchestrated since 2014. Now, however, it will be overshadowed by the battle to become her successor. It also risks being a poisoned chalice for her successor: its decisions will bind him or her to follow a policy they have not framed and one they know is unpopular.
Although the SNP’s national executive has not yet confirmed the leadership vote timetable, it is highly unlikely that Sturgeon’s successor will be in post by 19 March, so the event’s debates and decision will in turn colour the leadership campaign. And Scotland’s already critical voters will be watching.
Although Sturgeon’s popularity had waned recently, she remained Scotland’s most popular leader, defined by her largely skilled, empathic handling of the Covid-19 crisis. She also came to embody the independence cause; in 2014 Salmond made her the face of the yes campaign, sensing that her youth and outlook resonated with yes voters.
With the exception of John Swinney, her deputy, none of her successors are well known. That will reduce key elements of a successful quest for independence: confidence in the leader; confidence in the vision and in the SNP as a brand. Despite Brexit, Boris Johnson and Covid, independence has never had sustained majority support. Without Sturgeon, support is likely to dip further, forcing her successor into a long campaign to rebuild and reshape the yes movement. SC
And what does it mean for transgender rights?
The first minister steps down with the future of gender recognition reform in Scotland in limbo, and as the recent furore around transgender prisoners shows no sign of abating.
In early January, the UK government blocked a Scottish government bill intended to introduce a system of self-identification for people seeking to change their legal gender from going for royal assent, citing “safety issues for women and children”, despite the fact it had cross-party support at Holyrood.
Later that month a public outcry followed the news that a convicted double-rapist and transgender woman, Isla Bryson, was initially accommodated in a women’s prison. Bryson was moved to the male estate after a risk assessment, but similar cases emerged and opponents of the bill seized on the row as vindicating their concerns about its lack of safeguards.
The most pressing question is how a change of leadership affects the Scottish government’s plans to contest the UK’s decision to block the bill – which it did using section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998, described by sources as “the nuclear option”. Scottish ministers have three months from the date the section 35 order was laid – 16 January – to contest it.
Just as Sturgeon said on Wednesday that she did not think it was fair for a future party leader not to be involved in decisions on independence strategy, it is likely she will not want to tie their hands on court action over section 35. This has a practical dimension, as the time limit for action could expire before the leadership election is concluded.
People working in the equalities sector acknowledge that Sturgeon stepping down will mark a significant change, and there is initial unease and nervousness about what and who comes next, particularly with the UK Conservatives expected to fight the next general election on culture war territory. All underline that Sturgeon’s commitment to LGBT+ rights was wholly genuine and appreciated, and it is certainly that case that of all possible leadership contenders, none are as unapologetic in their support or as engaged in the detail as she has been.
Stonewall’s Colin Macfarlane said: “You can’t underestimate how important it was to have a strong ally at the heart of government.” Noting Sturgeon’s call to “de-polarise” public debate in her resignation remarks, he added: “It is important for us all to reflect that when politicians attempt to use marginalised groups as political footballs, there are human lives in the middle who are at stake.”
Also noticeable about Sturgeon’s remarks was that she did not mention gender recognition reform by name, although she made reference to “short-term pressures”. Equalities campaigners interpret this as a clear refusal to give critics an easy headline linking her resignation to her policy on transgender rights.
Talat Yaqoob, a campaigner and co-founder of Women 50:50, pointed out that gender recognition reform was part of a raft of equalities improvements under way and pursued by Sturgeon herself – including buffer zones at abortion clinics, categorising misogyny as a hate crime, changes to the criminal justice system to deliver for rape survivors, and the incorporation of international human rights legislation into Scottish law.
“All of this matters, and none of it can be sidelined based on a new leader’s personal interest or preference. Anyone who is positioning themselves to be Scotland’s first minister needs to prove they care about all of this and want a Scotland where economic and social equality is a reality,” Yaqoob said. LB
