The shock resignation today of Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon leaves Scottish politics in disarray and has wider ramifications for the UK’s ongoing constitutional crisis.
Sturgeon’s legacy over eight and a half years in office is a hotly disputed one, both in terms of domestic policy and the wider strategy for gaining independence. But she can rightly claim to have eviscerated her opponents and defeated a succession of Labour and Conservative leaders. Perhaps it is fair to say that she is far more successful as an electoral politician than a transformational one.
Sturgeon’s government has been endlessly caught between the triangulation of popular politics and the need to create an insurgent independence movement. But other factors have contributed to her being at the epicentre of a series of critical questions that have proved unsustainable. She has been exposed and divided on three critical fronts: she has been unable to navigate a path through the constitutional crisis, hemmed in by Westminster intransigence and suppression of democracy; she has been at the centre of the culture wars in Scotland, as she championed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill; and, thirdly, she has been the focus of the hostility of everyone who opposed independence (and many who support it).
