Over the past 33 years, the SNP has had just three leaders, Alex Salmond, John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon. All three – who between 2007 and 2014 ran Scotland as first minister, finance minister and deputy first minister – are from the party’s centre-left and its gradualist wing.
This once-troika took the party from a fringe group with three MPs and 27 local councillors to the most consistently electorally successful progressive party in Europe. Its handover to the next generation was always going to be a dramatic moment.
“Nicola resigning caught everyone by surprise,” says Edinburgh East MP Tommy Sheppard over lunch in his office, a five-minute walk from my flat. “She’s known for keeping her own counsel and she did so to the very end,” he adds with a laugh.
