Nicola Sturgeon will go down as one of the most formidable election winners in Scottish history.
Her legacy is rooted in success at the ballot box and can be seen in the many defeats inflicted on her opponents.
As she said during her resignation press conference, she fought eight elections as First Minister and won them all. Nobody has done this before.
After taking over from Alex Salmond in the wake of the independence referendum in 2014, her run of success spanned three general and two local elections, a couple of Holyrood polls and a European election.
The big one was her first – the post-referendum general election in 2015 – in which an SNP tsunami left the pro-UK parties with a trickle of seats and nearly wiped out Labour.
Even the last Holyrood election was remarkable. Although Sturgeon fell narrowly short of an overall majority, to come so close after 14 years in power for the Nationalists was incredible.
Election success did not always come so easily for her.
She lost to Labour’s Gordon Jackson in the first two Holyrood elections and pulled out of the SNP leadership contest in 2004, making way for Salmond.
Her victories as SNP leader were informed and influenced by the bitter experience of earlier defeat.
But winning elections is always a means to an end. And the question has to be asked: what did Sturgeon do with the power at her disposal?
After she took office, she said her top priority was closing the education attainment gap.
She said at the time: “If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line for the education of our young people then what are you prepared to? It really matters.”
“My priority for my time as First Minister – and let me be clear I want to be judged on this – is that every young person should have the same advantage that I had when I was growing up in Ayrshire.
“They should know that if they have the talent and work hard enough, they will be able to fulfil their potential.”
By any yardstick, the attainment gap between pupils from poor and wealthy areas has not closed. It has barely narrowed. Sturgeon failed to deliver on her top priority.
The troubles facing the health service on the First Minister’s watch will also be viewed unfavourably by historians.
Patients are struggling to see GPs and have been left languishing in ambulances outside hospitals.
Waiting lists are sky-high and the Queen Elizabeth in her own city of Glasgow has been linked to the unnecessary deaths of children.
Ferries that should have been built remain incomplete and public services more broadly are run-down.
The legislation making it easier for people to change gender, while well intentioned, has divided the country.
Sturgeon said short term difficulties were not the cause of her resignation, but she leaves behind a bulging in-tray of problems for her successor.
On the plus side, the £25-a-week Scottish child payment for low income families can be considered a significant achievement, as can the transformation in childcare services.
But two good policies in nearly nine years is a disappointing record. Historians will rightly point to two traumatic events that severely limited her ability to push through ambitious change.
The first was leading the response to the pandemic in Scotland. Every part of the government’s agenda was thrown overboard as ministers tried to halt the spread of a deadly disease.
But while the pandemic showed the frailties of the NHS and the schools system, many of these inequalities predated that time.
Her other energy-sapping nightmare was dealing with the rage of her predecessor Salmond over her government’s botched investigation into sexual harassment claims.
A Holyrood inquiry into the fiasco was clearly used by him and his proxies to try to bring down the First Minister.
Given how close the pair used to be, the damage to Sturgeon’s morale cannot be underestimated.
The other question about Sturgeon’s time in office is whether she moved the dial on independence – the issue she believes transcends all others.
Despite winning Holyrood elections, she effectively ran on a promise – indyref2 – that she could not deliver.
The UK Government rejected calls for a joint agreement and judges closed the door on Sturgeon organising a referendum unilaterally.
This led to her coming up with a dog-eared Plan C – using the next general election as a referendum on independence. Such a strategy is full of holes, including a franchise that favours the No side and an approach that could see SNP MPs lose their seats.
This leads to perhaps the biggest criticism that can be made of Sturgeon’s time in office. She concentrated too much on the nuts and bolts of a referendum, rather than building support for a revamped case for independence.
Her focus was on keeping true believers sweet with empty promises on indyref2, instead of trying to preach to the unconverted. The Government she is leaving behind is sagging and the independence movement is drifting.
Sturgeon is a politician of the top rank who commands respect even from people who do not vote for her.
But her eight-and-a-half years in charge were a missed opportunity to deliver meaningful change.
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