And so farewell Nicola Sturgeon the SNP's best leader and the worst
The architect of her own misfortune, Scotland's longest serving First Minister raised Holyrood's game and nearly broke up Britain.
And so, farewell, Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish National Party’s greatest and worst leader. Greatest: she delivered some of the biggest landslides in British political history in elections to Westminster and Holyrood. Worst: her failure to “move the dial” on independence, plus her obsession with gender ideology and greenwashing, alienated middle Scotland and dismayed her nationalist followers.
Her feud with her former mentor, the late Alex Salmond, over the latter’s alleged sexual misconduct left a lingering stain on her period in office as First Minister. The Court of Session ruled in January 2019 that the disciplinary committee that made the accusations against the former First Minister had acted “unlawfully” and that the allegations of sexual harassment against him were “tainted with apparent bias.” Salmond was eventually acquitted of all charges of sexual harassment in the High Court in March 2020. The dispute between the two greatest stars in the SNP firmament demoralised and divided the party. Indeed, some trace the decline and fall of Scottish nationalism to that very episode.
So, there will be mixed feelings in the independence movement at the departure from Holyrood of the longest-serving nationalist First Minister. She loathed the term and even said she wanted the word “National” removed from her party’s title. She sometimes seemed to regard independence for Scotland as of lesser importance than pushing the boundaries of LGBTQIA+ policies. Her precipitate resignation from Bute House in February 2023, following the scandal of a transgender rapist, Isla Bryson, being placed in a women’s prison, plunged the party into chaos from which it has yet to recover. Her chosen successor, Humza Yousaf, resigned himself only a year later after a succession of scandals and policy mishaps over ferry contracts and recycling schemes.
Operation Branchform has also hung over Nicola Sturgeon’s recent history like a bad smell—quite unfairly, in my view. There has been no obvious justification for Police Scotland and the Crown Office taking three years to resolve this matter, which has obvious political fallout. She insists that she “has done absolutely nothing wrong,” and I don’t know anyone in politics who doesn’t believe her. Yet the former FM is still under police investigation two years after she was arrested as part of the inquiry into the alleged misuse of donations to the party. Her husband, the former party chief executive, Peter Murrell, has been charged with embezzlement and also denies wrongdoing. She has recently separated from Murrell after 15 years of marriage.
Now, after a quarter of a century in parliament, Nicola Sturgeon has decided to separate from active politics. Sturgeon has told her supporters that after 26 years: “the time is right for me to embrace different opportunities and to allow you to select a new standard-bearer.” She insists that she will not be going quietly. “It is more important than ever,” she told supporters on social media, “that progressive voices, inside and outside of Parliaments, continue to speak up for fairness, equality, and dignity for all. Be in no doubt that I will always speak out and stand up for what I believe in.” So, she is gone, but will not be forgotten.
I feel personally torn about Ms Sturgeons departure from the Scottish Parliament after a quarter of a century of reporting on her rise and fall. She was undoubtedly a class act. I have never met a politician more focused and intellectually disciplined. I disagreed with many of her policies, especially the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. I could never understand how a lifelong feminist could support a policy, Self-ID, which allowed any man to declare himself a woman and gain access to women’s single-sex spaces. I also thought her coalition with the Scottish Green Party was unwise. Her promotion of potentially ruinous policies, like halting North Sea production while still importing oil and gas from abroad, serves in my view, to actually makes Net Zero harder to achieve. You have to take the public with you. Her grandstanding with Greta Thunberg at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 left many Scots cold—literally, since many of them can now no longer afford to heat their homes as the promise of cheap renewable energy failed to materialise.
However, no one could deny that Nicola Sturgeon was one of the most able politicians of her generation—not just in Scotland, but in the UK. Indeed, the First Minister achieved celebrity abroad as well as in Scotland, commanding attention and respect from all parties in Westminster and from the “progressive” politicians in Brussels. During Boris Johnson’s chaotic period in Number Ten, as Sturgeon racked up successive election victories, a number of Tory MPs started to seriously think that independence was inevitable.
The former UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, contemplated awarding Scotland a repeat referendum on independence, which, it is possible, she might have won. In the 2015 general election, the SNP returned a staggering 56 out of 59 Westminster MPs. In times past, that would have been regarded as a mandate to begin negotiations on independence. Not this time, however. The moment passed, and while many Scots still say they favour independence, the prospects of it happening are disappearing into the mists. Nicola Sturgeon will inevitably be blamed for the failure to translate electoral success into constitutional change.
Before she resigned as First Minister two years ago, Ms Sturgeon had dropped large hints that she was tiring of the rough and tumble of Scottish politics and was looking for new challenges, possibly in the literary field. She has been a regular attendee of book festivals, is close to authors such as the Scottish crime writer Val McDermid, and has, of course, written her own memoirs, which will be published in September.
She leaves a party that has written off much of her legacy. John Swinney has abandoned attempts to lift the UK government’s block on the gender bill. Her coalition with the Scottish Green Party, under the Bute House Agreement of 2021, is long gone, and the Scottish government has abandoned the ambitious emissions reduction targets she established. Only this week, it scrapped her plans to replace a million gas boilers by 2030. Climate aside, Sturgeon said she wanted to be judged on her ability to close the educational attainment gap. But Scottish education standards declined during her period in office, and the poverty-related attainment gap remains as wide as ever.
The Scottish Parliament will undoubtedly be all worse for the loss of this formidable politician. Scottish MSPs are not generally regarded as the sharpest tools in the political box, and no one has ever commanded the debating chamber quite like Nicola Sturgeon. Not even Alex Salmond, who never quite made the transition from Westminster to Holyrood. They won’t be raising any statues to her. But Nicola Sturgeon, for all her faults and failures, gave life to the institution and commanded the attention of the UK media like no Scottish leader. She raised the game of Scottish politics and will be remembered as the politician who almost, but not quite, broke up Britain.
And so farewell, Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish National Party’s greatest and worst leader. Greatest: she delivered some of the biggest landslides in British political history in elections to Westminster and Holyrood. Worst: her failure to “move the dial” on independence, plus her obsession with gender ideology and greenwash, alienated middle Scotland and dismayed her nationalist followers.
Her feud with her former mentor, the late Alex Salmond, over the latter’s alleged sexual misconduct, left a lingering stain on her administration. The Court of Session ruled in January 2019 that the disciplinary committee which made the accusations against the former First Minister had acted “unlawfully” and that the allegations of sexual harassment against him were “tainted with apparent bias”. Salmond was eventually acquitted of all charges of sexual harassment in the High Court in March 2020. The dispute between the two greatest stars it the SNP firmament demoralised and divided the party. Indeed, some trace the decline and fall of Scottish nationalism to that very episode.
So, there will be mixed feelings in the independence movement at the departure from Holyrood of the longest serving nationalist First Minister. She loathed the term and even said she wanted the word “National” removed from her party’s title. Her precipitate resignation from Bute House in February 2023, following the scandal of a transgender rapist, Isla Bryson, being placed in women’s prison, plunged the party into chaos from which it has yet to recover. Her chosen successor, Humza Yousaf, resigned himself only a year later after a succession of scandals and policy mishaps over ferry contracts and recycling schemes.
Operation Branchform has also hung over Nicola Sturgeon’s recent history like a bad smell - quite unfairly in my view. There has been no obvious justification for Police Scotland and the Crown Office taking three years to resolve this matter, which has obvious political fallout. She insists that she “has done absolutely nothing wrong” and I don’t know anyone in politics who doesn’t believe her. Yet the former FM is still under police investigation two years after she was arrested as part of the inquiry into alleged misuse of donations to the party. Her husband, the former party chief executive has been charged with embezzlement, and also denies wrongdoing. She has recently separated from Murrell after 15 years of marriage.
Now after a quarter of a century years in parliament Nicola Sturgeon has decided to finally leave active politics altogether. Sturgeon has told her supporters that “the time is right for me to embrace different opportunities and to allow you to select a new standard-bearer”. She insists that she will not be going quietly. “It is more important than ever” she told supporters on social media, "that progressive voices, inside and outside of Parliaments, continue to speak up for fairness, equality and dignity for all. Be in no doubt that I will always speak out and stand up for what I believe in”. So she is gone but will not be forgotten.
I feel personally torn about her final departure from the Scottish Parliament, after almost a quarter of a century of reporting on her rise and fall. She was undoubtedly a class act. I have never met a politician more focussed and intellectually disciplined. I disagreed with many of her policies, especially the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. I could never understand how a life-long feminist could support a policy, Self-ID, which allowed allowed any man to declare himself a woman and gain access to women’s single sex spaces. I also thought her coalition with the Scottish Green Party was unwise. Her promotion of potentially ruinous policies, like halting North Sea production while still importing oil and gas from abroad, in my view actually makes Net Zero harder to achieve. You have to take the public with you. Her grandstanding with Greta Thunberg at Cop 26 in Glasgow in 2021 left many Scots cold - literally since many of them can now no longer afford to heat their homes as the promise of cheap renewable energy failed to materialise.
However, no one could deny that Nicola Sturgeon was one of the most able politicians of her generation - and not just in Scotland, but in the UK. Indeed, the First Minister achieved celebrity abroad as well as in Scotland, as well as commanding attention and respect from all parties in Westminster. During Boris Johnson’s chaotic period in Number Ten, as Sturgeon racked up successive election victories, a number of Tory MPs started to seriously think that independence was inevitable.
The former UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, contemplated awarding Scotland a repeat referendum on independence which, it is possible, she might have won. In the 2015 general election the SNP returned a staggering 56 out of 59 Westminster MPs In times past, that would have been regarded as a mandate to begin negotiations on independence. Not this time, however. The moment passed and while many Scots still say they favour independence, the prospects of it happening are disappearing into the mists. Nicola Sturgeon will be inevitably be blamed for the failure to translate electoral success into constitutional change.
Before she resigned as First Minister, Ms Sturgeon had dropped large hints for most of the previous year that she was tiring of the rough and tumble of Scottish politics and was looking for new challenges, possibly in the literary field. She has been a regular attendee of book festivals, is close to authors such as the Scottish crime writer, Val McDermid,, and has, of course, written her own memoirs, which will be published in September.
She leaves a party that has written off much of her legacy. John Swinney has abandoned attempts to lift the UK government’s block on the gender bill. Her coalition with the Scottish Green Party, under the Bute House Agreement of 2021, is long gone, and the Scottish government has abandoned the ambitious emissions reduction targets she established. Only this week, it scrapped her plans to replace a million gas boilers by 2030. Climate aside, Sturgeon said she wanted to be judged on her ability to close the educational attainment gap. But Scottish education standards declined during her period in office and the poverty-related attainment gap remains as wide as ever.
The Scottish Parliament will undoubtedly be all the worse for the loss of this formidable politician. Scottish MSPs are not generally regarded as the sharpest tools in the political box and no one has ever commanded the debating chamber quite like Nicola Sturgeon. Not even Alex Salmond, who never quite made the transition from Westminster to Holyrood. They won’t be raising any statues to her. But Nicola Sturgeon, for all her faults and failures, gave life to the institution and commanded the attention of the UK media. She raised the game of Scottish politics and will be remembered as the politician who almost, but not quite, broke up Britain.
Having met Ms Sturgeon I can attest to the fact she is personable and spent a great deal of time visiting a newly opened facility in her constituency. She chatted, she drank tea and she posed for selfies. But I did not get the impression I was dealing with a towering political intellect. In fact she seemed no different to other MPs and worthies I've met over the years. People trying to do their best and I believe motivated by good intentions but I fear we conflate a public plateform or being a member of the media with intellect or special abilities.
Ms Sturgeon was dealt a brilliant hand didn't play it. She couldn't because she lacked the political imagination to do so. Had Salmond been in charge, or Joanna Cherry things might have been different.
This was evident during covid when it seemed she proposed policies just to be different from the rest of the UK. There was no evidence base and she slipped out of responsibility for discharging infected people from hospital to care homes. She looked presidential - easy to do when Westminister is paying for furlough and providing the vaccines.
She didn't like medical staff- that was clear to anyone in the NHS and thanks to her NHS Scotland has more vacancies at consultant level. In my last hears at work I activly discouraged my younger colleagues from seeking consultant posts in Scotland because they were openly offered job plans that made it difficult to do CPD let alone discharge their clinical duties withou burnout.
Education is now worse than in England - I never thought I'd say that. And as for her bonkers inability to say Isla Bryson was a man was to me, the final demonstration of a woman more in thrall to ideology than rationality or even commons sense.
I suspect her interest in LGBTQ politics may solidify into something more tangible soon.
All that said I hope she finds whatever she is seeking.
Very good article. I agree more or less with it all. I voted for NS Snp as she gave commitment to reform social care which has now been abandoned like most of what the snp Holywood manifesto talked about. Parliament is far more parochial without NS but less divisive, so can see both sides of her influence over last decade. A huge figure in Scotland politics undoubtedly.