People

Nicola Sturgeon’s successor will need a more realistic approach to Scottish independence

None of her would-be replacements can match her connection with the typical voter in Scotland

It is hard to imagine any of Nicola Sturgeon's successors being better-placed to make the argument for independence in the short to medium term. Photograph: Jane Barlow/Getty

Alex Massie in Edinburgh
Sat Feb 18 2023 - 06:00

Was this a surprise?

Yes and no. For some time Nicola Sturgeon has hinted that her time in office was drawing to a close. In an interview last summer she talked about writing her memoirs and about her life after politics. She and her husband, Peter Murrell, the chief executive of the Scottish National Party (SNP), have discussed the possibility of fostering children. Politicians determined to remain in office for years to come do not typically talk in this fashion. If Sturgeon was irritated by speculation about her future, it was nonetheless speculation she invited.

However, the timing and abruptness of her resignation caught most of her colleagues by surprise. It had been thought she might remain in post until next year’s general election before stepping down to give a successor time to prepare for the 2026 Scottish parliamentary elections.

A combination of weariness and political difficulty helped accelerate the timetable for her departure. The tank was emptying, she suggested, echoing remarks made by Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, who resigned last month. In each case, the burden of leading their countries through the worst of the Covid pandemic took a heavy toll, even if the full implications of this were not felt until some time after the worst was past.

While Sturgeon said she could have “battled on” for another few months, she could also feel her commitment slackening. And when a leader begins to have doubts, these have a habit of multiplying rapidly.

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What political difficulties?

Although Sturgeon’s personal approval ratings remained healthy, a poll conducted earlier this month revealed that more than 40 per cent of Scottish voters thirsted for her resignation. One in four SNP supporters either wished for her departure or were uncertain if she should remain in office.

A series of political setbacks – ranging from an inability to build new ferries for Scotland’s island communities to controversy over gender-recognition reforms – had dented public confidence in Sturgeon’s government. Her prevarication over whether a transgender prisoner should be placed in a men’s or women’s facility was also criticised.

Sturgeon’s Bill to allow people to self-identify as their preferred gender was vetoed by the Westminster government, citing its spillover impact on equalities law, which is a reserved matter. Though Sturgeon deplored this “full-frontal assault” on Scottish democracy and prerogatives, it appears that most voters may have sided with the UK government on this issue.

In like fashion, the supreme court’s ruling last autumn that the Scottish Parliament did not have the unilateral right to legislate for a second independence referendum failed to spark the public backlash SNP figures hoped – and expected – it might. Sturgeon accuses her opponents, and those Scots who oppose a referendum, of “denying democracy” but, as yet, the people remain broadly unmoved by these complaints.

In the face of that setback, Sturgeon promised to fight the next general election on a single issue. The SNP would treat it as a “de facto referendum” and treat winning 50 per cent of the votes cast in Scotland as a mandate for independence or, failing that, a further referendum on the national question.

Many of her parliamentary colleagues have grave misgivings about such an approach. They note that failing to secure a majority of the votes – a better result than any in the SNP’s history – would permit unionist politicians to claim the SNP had got their second referendum and lost it. That might set the independence cause back a generation.

The sense gathered that Sturgeon had run out of road on the constitutional question that has defined and driven her political life. With no viable route to a referendum, she was forced to search for an alternative, however desperate. The most recent opinion poll suggested 56 per cent of voters would reject independence if given the chance – almost exactly the same result as that achieved in 2014. After eight years in office, little tangible progress has been made in terms of independence. Scotland is an evenly divided country and neither side is strong enough to rout the other.

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Is there an obvious successor?

No. John Swinney, the deputy first minister and former party leader, has ruled himself out of contention. Angus Robertson, the culture secretary and former leader of the SNP’s Westminster group, may be a contender and Humza Yousaf, the health secretary, is expected to run.

Many eyes will turn to Kate Forbes, the 32-year-old finance secretary currently on maternity leave. Like Yousaf (37) her candidacy would represent a changing of the generational guard.

However, Forbes is a member of the Free Kirk of Scotland, and her views on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and gender-recognition may sit uncomfortably with a party that considers itself progressive.

Other potential candidates, such as Neil Gray, a junior minister, and Ash Regan, who resigned from government in protest at Sturgeon’s gender reforms, have almost no public profile. Indeed, none of Sturgeon’s would-be replacements can match either the depth or breadth of her connection with the typical Scottish voter.

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What does her departure mean for the union?

In the short term, it is an indication that Scottish independence is not an imminent possibility, let alone likely. Sturgeon’s departure implicitly recognises her failure, even if neither she nor her supporters would put it like that. Despite that, the argument has neither gone away nor been settled. It is difficult to imagine circumstances in which support for independence drops below 40 per cent of voters. More than 60 per cent of Scots under 40 say they favour the break-up of Britain and while, as Northern Ireland also shows, changing demographics are no guarantee of destiny, they should nevertheless concentrate unionist minds.

Sturgeon told The Irish Times in 2021 that, when she speaks to friends in Ireland, “we sometimes joke which will come first – an independent Scotland or a United Ireland”, but, in truth, while Brexit has for many simplified the political case for both, it has also, and particularly in Scotland, complicated the practical means by which independence could first be delivered and then made to work. The SNP has not yet been able to offer persuasive answers to questions such as currency, cross-border relations with the rump UK, and EU admission.

Independence should be regarded as neither a historical inevitability nor an impossible dream. It lies, uneasily, somewhere between the two: wholly thinkable in theory but grimly difficult in practice. Sturgeon’s successor will be required to fashion a new, and arguably more realistic, prospectus. As Brexit itself demonstrates, wishing real problems away does not in fact make them disappear.

Unionist jubilation and nationalist despair should each be tempered. Sturgeon’s departure is unavoidably a setback for the SNP but the structural analysis upon which the case for independence is built remains largely intact. Even so, it is hard to imagine any of her successors being better-placed to make the argument for independence in the short to medium term than Sturgeon. At the margin, leadership matters.

[ ‘Nicola Sturgeon was a friend of Ireland’: Departing Scottish first minister praised by Irish politicians ]

What is Sturgeon’s legacy?

Mixed, to say the least. She inherited a bitterly divided country cleft in two along constitutional lines and she bequeaths her successor a country even more polarised on the only question upon which almost every Scottish voter has a view. She was, in the end, a divisive figure and if she laments the “brutality” of Scottish political discourse, she remains blind to her role in helping create it.

In policy terms, her stewardship of areas such as health and education has resulted in no great improvement. Sturgeon would argue this is a feature of devolution, not a bug. Lacking the “levers” available to an independent state, she has done the best she can in imperfect circumstances. Yet the sense persists that this is an all-too-convenient excuse for suboptimal outcomes. Her greatest achievement is the creation of a suite of new social security benefits, particularly a Scottish child payment that has redistributed income from wealthier Scots to some of the poorest families in the country.

Be that as it may, she also leaves office with the SNP as Scotland’s dominant political party and, perhaps more significantly, a cultural phenomenon armour-plated against unionist criticism. To vote for and support the SNP is less an endorsement of specific policy measures but, rather, a kind of self-declaration. The SNP is a movement as much as it is a standard political party. Sturgeon’s success lies in that merging of identity with politics.

Ultimately, however, Sturgeon’s goal, her life’s ambition, was independence. Judged on that metric alone, she leaves office as a failure, albeit a peculiarly successful kind of failure.

Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of the Spectator and a columnist for the Times and the Sunday Times

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