After a turbulent month and a half for the Scottish first minister, Nichola Sturgeon has resigned as leader of the devolved Scottish parliament. She took the U.K. by surprise when she announced her resignation on Wednesday after eight years in office, saying she knew “in my head and in my heart” it was time to leave.
Forging her party, the Scottish National Party, or SNP, into the single most dominant force in the Scottish parliament Sturgeon has been considered one of the most central figures in Scottish and British politics of the last decade. She appeared to be in a strong political position coming out of the Covid pandemic with a performance many people consider superior to that of Westminster. So, what caused the downfall of this political Juggernaut?
Sturgeon’s fall could be put down to two key issues. Possibly overestimated her political position she has led the party to go all in on the issue that made her political career, Scottish Independence. The independence debate was the fire that she used to forge the SNP into the political fighting force it is, however, after the failed 2014 referendum on the topic the party has been divided on how it should respond. The people had spoken against the party’s campaign for a strong independent Scotland with a 55% 45% vote against Independence, so how do they respond? let the subject sit settled or keep pushing? They chose the latter.
In 2021 the SNP strengthened its hold over the Scottish Parliament and started publicly demanding a rerun of the 2014 vote. Nicola Sturgeon pencilled in that rerun for early 2023 if the U.K. Supreme Court said she had the power to hold it in the face of opposition from London who was refusing to give permission. On the 23rd of November 2022 however the supreme court ruled that Scotland did not in fact have permission to operate an independence referendum without the permission of Parliament. As a result, the SNP decided to openly state that the next UK nationwide general election, most likely happening in 2024, would be fought in Scotland on the grounds of independence. A vote for the SNP would be a vote for an independent Scotland, making the elections a de facto referendum. This was an unbelievably risky move; Sturgeon had tied her, and the party's political future, to a debate the SNP had lost by nearly 10% among the electorate. The result was a rift inside the party of the bullish and the cautions seriously destabilizing Sturgeon's position.
The straw that broke the camel's back however was the passing in late 2022 of a gender recognition act by the Scottish parliament that had cross party support but was predominantly pushed by the ruling SNP party. The bill hoped to streamline the process young trans individuals go through to get legal and medical recognition in Scotland. Primarily though the lowering of the age at which people can apply for a gender recognition certificate from 18 to 16 alongside eliminating the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Although the intentions may be noble the political implications became unbelievably divisive. Again the party was split across the issue, London was blocking the decision from being implemented into Scottish law and the government looked weak. Most likely to combination of these two stresses caused a fracturing in unified SNP and Sturgeon saw the writing on the wall, resigning on 15th February 2023.
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