Edinburg: Humza Yousaf has been elected the first minority ethnic leader of the Scottish National party in a narrow victory that confirmed deep divisions over policy within his party, according to a media report.
Yousaf is almost certain to be confirmed as Scotland’s next first minister in a nominal vote at Holyrood on Tuesday, but he now has to bridge the divides by bringing the SNP’s warring wings together, The Guardian reported.
Widely seen as Nicola Sturgeon’s preference as her successor, Yousaf defeated his closest rival, Kate Forbes, by a narrower than expected 52 per cent to 48 per cent after second preference votes cast by supporters of the third candidate, Ash Regan, who came last in the first round, were counted. The turnout was 70 per cent, The Guardian reported.
Yousaf, who has become the first minority ethnic leader of the Scottish government, has had the advantage and the curse of being seen as the continuity candidate and Nicola Sturgeon’s unacknowledged favourite, The Guardian reported.
Of all the three candidates, Yousaf (37) was the only enthusiast for Sturgeon’s approach and earned by far the most endorsements from SNP parliamentarians and ministers, notably including Sturgeon’s deputy and closest political friend, John Swinney, himself a former leader of the party.
In many ways, Yousaf represents the “new Scotland” that Sturgeon and her predecessor, Alex Salmond, have sought to project through the SNP and he is seen as the role model of an inclusive, multiracial country and an inclusive nationalism, The Guardian reported.
Pulling into a service station to listen to Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation speech on Wednesday morning, I was hit by a wave of sadness. It wasn’t that the first minister’s departure was unexpected. Though the precise timing was a shock, she has been visibly flagging for months, and her popularity has been waning even among SNP diehards. “She’s lost the room,” one loyalist told me recently. When Jacinda Ardern – a politician Sturgeon greatly admires – stepped down as the prime minister of New Zealand with the words: “We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time,” I imagined Sturgeon thinking: “That’s the way to do it.”
Nor am I blind to the chequered nature of the first minister’s legacy. It has been disappointing to watch a woman who came to power with such noble aspirations fail to deliver on a succession of pledges, such as closing the educational attainment gap, and become mired in a succession of controversies, such as the ferry fiasco and the “missing” £600,000 of SNP funds.
Yet her speech – and the poise with which she delivered it – brought back all that was good about her leadership: the almost Calvinist sense of duty, the relatability, the humility. These are qualities absent in the five UK prime ministers who have been in office as she attempted to steer her ship through the choppy waters that their greed and populism created.
Sturgeon has her own character flaws. Her cautious nature has had a dampening effect on her radicalism, and her reluctance to listen to anyone outside her inner circle led to errors of judgment on the “named person” legislation, which was later found to breach children’s right to privacy, and on the gender recognition reform bill, which Rishi Sunak blocked in a historic challenge to Scottish devolution.
Still, if Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or Sunak had possessed a fraction of Sturgeon’s integrity, there would have been no Brexit, no support for bankers’ bonuses and no hint of tax avoidance. And if they had acknowledged the SNP’s overwhelming mandate for a second independence referendum, she would not now be facing criticism for failing to secure one.
Furthermore, while Sturgeon’s policies may not have been ambitious enough for those on the left of the SNP, Scotland’s tax system is the most progressive in the UK, and the Conservatives’ welfare reforms are being mitigated by the child payment – £25 per child per week for low-income families.
Sturgeon made enemies on both sides of the constitutional divide. Sometimes it felt like she couldn’t win.
But the sight of her, eloquent and self-reflective at the podium brought back her finest hour: guiding Scotland through the pandemic. There were mistakes there, too, of course, most notably the release of untested hospital patients into care homes. But her messaging was always clear and direct, and you never doubted she cared or that she was giving her all.
You could no more imagine Sturgeon socialising while other people mourned alone than you could imagine Johnson stacking chairs at the end of a political meeting (something Sturgeon was wont to do even as first minister). Or resigning gracefully in the interests of his party and his country.
Her speech was also a reminder of how she transformed the landscape. When I returned to Scotland from England in 1996, politics and journalism was male-dominated, with female voices pushed to the margins. Sturgeon changed all that, not merely by being a woman at the helm (after all, there have been two female prime ministers during her time in power), but by actively promoting gender equality.
Her government’s handling of the initial allegations against Alex Salmond, and the inquiry that followed, almost proved her undoing. But the impulse to change the sexual harassment complaints process came from a place of principle; and she stuck to those principles despite the outpouring of vitriol and misogyny they unleashed. Though Sturgeon insists the fallout from the GRR bill was not the catalyst for her departure, the accusation that she has squandered her right to be considered a feminist must be painful.
The timing of her resignation appears to have more to do with the forthcoming conference on “election-based options” designed to force the UK government into negotiations on independence. Sturgeon knows her preferred option – turning the general election into a de facto referendum – is divisive. “And I cannot in good conscience ask the party to choose an option based on my judgment, whilst not being convinced that I would be there as leader to see it through,” she explained. “Conscience”: there’s a concept that’s been in short supply these last 10 years.
I admire Sturgeon for not clinging too desperately to her dream of personally delivering independence. It must be tough to give up something that has consumed so much of your life – although it may be easier to cede power if you have not desired it for its own sake, but as a means of securing an ideal that transcends your own ego.
I admire her, too, for not believing she is indispensable; for having faith in the next generation of SNP politicians. My service station sadness was part ruefulness for what might have been, part fear there was no one else capable of filling her shoes. It’s impossible to conceive of any of the touted contenders – Kate Forbes, Keith Brown, Neil Gray – filling stadiums full of selfie-seeking fans. But while Sturgeon’s competence was established before she became first minister, her popularity was a product of timing; she rode into town on a post-referendum high. Whoever succeeds her will have to make their own luck, to rethink the party’s entire strategy and approach. That may be no bad thing.
Dani Garavelli is a freelance journalist and columnist for the Herald
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Nicola Sturgeon takes part in a mask-making craft activity with Lily Orr (left) and Lily Sinclair, (right), both aged 7, during a visit to Lowson Memorial Church Free Breakfast Club in Forfar, to meet volunteers who deliver the service and discuss cost of living concerns with families who are using the facility
Photograph: Getty Images
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
For those close friends who got a text from Nicola Sturgeon in the hours before she publicly announced her resignation as Scotland’s first minister, it was the timing and not the fact of her departure that came as the almighty shock.
But Sturgeon is a woman who likes to craft her own narrative. For months, the first minister has been buffeted by decisions not of her making – the supreme court ruling that she cannot hold a second independence referendum without Westminster approval, the UK government blocking Holyrood’s gender recognition bill – as domestic headwinds around the NHS, education and transport grew ever more unfavourable.
And so on a lacklustre spring morning in the middle of recess, she seized back control of her own story with a delicately detonated political bombshell. She leaves her party with no obvious successor and those same challenges unresolved – and herself, at the age of 52, as she stressed today, with plenty of road ahead of her.
The superlatives flooded in from supporters and opponents alike, describing Scotland’s first female first minister, who has led her party to political dominance for nearly a decade, as “formidable”, “unparalleled”, “tireless”.
So began the inevitable parsing of her resignation speech, itself praised for its honesty and humility – particularly in contrast to recent UK prime ministerial resignations. Those familiar with Sturgeon’s sensibility were mindful too of recent remarks from former New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern, someone with whom Sturgeon is known to feel a kinship.
That Sturgeon was ready to leave the role she has occupied since she seamlessly replaced Alex Salmond in 2014 was no secret. For at least 18 months, she has been dropping regular hints and allusions to her post-Holyrood future: telling Vogue in October 2021 that she and her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, had discussed fostering, and the Guardian in August 2022 that she looked forward to “just not feeling as if you’re on public display all the time”.
All of which seemed jarring for a politician who was also claiming to be up for the fight over a second referendum and the gender bill.
But still the abruptness of the announcement was a surprise, although the explanation given was straightforward enough: with a special conference in March to decide the next steps on independence strategy, she wants to leave the SNP – and her successor – “free to choose” without her.
The immediate speculation was whether Sturgeon was anticipating heavy and humiliating opposition to her preferred option of running a future election as a de facto referendum at the special conference – or what other domestic catastrophes had yet to emerge.
While she insisted at her press conference that the ongoing row over the placement of transgender offenders in women’s prisons was not “the final straw”, this was also the moment when she revealed most emotion, appearing close to tears as she told reporters: “I will always be a voice for inclusion … I will always be a feminist.”
While Sturgeon has been consistently robust in her defence of her reforms, those working closely with her acknowledge how difficult the last few weeks of relentless and increasingly personal criticism have been, overlaying the regular denunciations of her deeply held feminist beliefs during the passage of the gender recognition reform bill through Holyrood, with hundreds of (mainly) female protesters booing her outside the parliament building and wearing T-shirts with the slogan: “Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women’s rights.”
“People can only take so much” says one SNP veteran, but this applies as much to her experience leading the country through the pandemic, and the Salmond saga which played out concurrently.
Jeane Freeman, whose friendship with Sturgeon was cemented when she worked as her health secretary during the pandemic, told the Guardian: “It’s inevitable that going through something as relentless and all-consuming takes its toll, as I know personally. I don’t think any of us know the impact it has had on us until we’ve had space and time to reflect on it.”
Sturgeon has also previously discussed her lack of time to fully reflect on the “toxic horribleness”, as she described it last summer, as the Salmond saga – which saw two high-profile investigations into the Scottish government’s handling of harassment complaints made against the former first minister, constant calls for her to quit, and ultimately her being cleared of misleading parliament.
Maybe now the time has come for such reflection for the woman whose mammoth contribution to post-devolution politics has yet to be fully assessed.
Her unerring ability to “speak human” brought her to an audience well beyond Scotland, particularly during her daily Covid briefings, and she remains one of the few politicians in the UK recognised by her first name alone – an electoral boon not enjoyed by any of her potential successors.
While the level of adoration may have calmed since the high point of “Nicola-mania” during the 2015 election campaign when she was regularly mobbed by adoring and sometimes tearful admirers demanding selfies, she remains a popular and trusted figure.
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In her resignation speech she warmly thanked “my SNP family”, the party she joined as a serious-minded 16-year-old in the 1980s, when support for independence was marginal and membership was not about forging a career in politics.
Sturgeon’s leadership style is often criticised for her keeping a tight-knit group around her – unlike Salmond’s unruly court – with regular complaints from both Holyrood and Westminster groups that she fails to engage with the party’s rank and file.
This can partly be explained as personality: she describes herself as naturally reserved and shy, but has spoken out about profoundly personal experiences of miscarriage and menopause, saying she feels an obligation as the first woman in her office to “move the dial a little bit”.
Meanwhile, younger women politicians emerged to salute her as a personal inspiration, with social media this afternoon peppered with testimony – not only from SNP members – from those who say they would not have considered entering public life without her example.
MP Amy Callaghan toppled the former Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson in 2019 and Sturgeon’s delighted fist-pumping reaction, caught unintentionally on camera, went viral at the time. Callaghan, who suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2020, spoke warmly of Sturgeon as “a great source of knowledge and strength during my campaign, and also through my ill-health”.
Those who know Sturgeon well highlight her comments on Wednesday on the polarisation of Scottish politics, and its “brutal” nature – especially for women. They praise her insight in recognising the point where her own leadership, or the perception of it, has itself become a barrier to change.
While she leaves the independence question in deadlock, she insisted her decision to step down was anchored in what was right “for the country, for my party and for the independence cause I have devoted my life to”.
While she indicated she may not stand again for Holyrood at the next Holyrood elections in 2026, she said that her commitment to that cause was unwavering.
“Whenever I do stop being first minister,” Sturgeon told the Guardian in August 2022, “I’m still going to be relatively young. This would not always have been true of me, but a life after politics doesn’t faze me.
“The world is my oyster.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Nicola Sturgeon has announced her resignation after more than eight years as first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National party.
“Essentially, I’ve been trying to answer two questions: is carrying on right for me? And more importantly, is me carrying on right for the country, for my party and for the independence cause I have devoted my life to?” Sturgeon said at a press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh.
Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, tells Hannah Moore why he believes Sturgeon chose this moment to step down. At the press conference, Sturgeon said her party was “awash with talented individuals”. Carrell discusses who is likely to succeed her, and what her departure means for the SNP and the Scottish independence movement.
Photograph: Getty Images
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The political vultures have been circling Nicola Sturgeon for several weeks now. But her resignation as first minister and leader of the SNP still comes as a lightning bolt from a not especially threatening Scottish political sky. It is certain to trigger the biggest convulsion in Scottish politics since the independence referendum of 2014, and its implications will be felt across the electoral and constitutional politics of the whole UK too.
Sturgeon’s resignation statement at Bute House today showed why she will be such a formidable act to follow, and also why it is time for her to go. She had much to say, about Scotland, independence, Covid and political life, which was as eloquently done as ever. But her speech, perhaps like her leadership, went on too long. Even as she spoke, you could sense that the political world was cruelly turning to consider the post-Sturgeon era.
It has been a commonplace among those who track Scottish politics that Sturgeon has been in what one columnist called her late imperial phase for many months. She had begun to lose her touch – and hence her hold – especially when compared with her mother-of-the-nation mastery during Covid. Even within the ranks of her Scottish National party, the most self-disciplined and tongue-holding political force in these islands outside Sinn Féin, criticisms and disagreements were being voiced.
Nicola Sturgeon resigns as first minister of Scotland – video
Sturgeon’s departure emerges from a constellation of proximate causes. Her handling of Scotland’s new gender recognition laws – unpopular with the majority of Scots – has been uncharacteristically heavy footed. Her strategy on independence – still the central divide in Scottish politics – has been heading into a constitutional cul-de-sac. Her domestic record as first minister has come under unusually intense and scathing challenge. Her performances in the Holyrood parliament and in her recent press conferences have been second rate, especially from a political leader who was once such an accomplished public performer.
In the end, though, she is surely also going for the reason that she tried to put at the centre of her resignation speech. She has been SNP leader and first minister for eight years now, since succeeding Alex Salmond. She was Salmond’s deputy for nearly eight years before that. There is no ideal number of years for a leader to serve, but Sturgeon’s 16 years – like those of Angela Merkel – are surely too much. As Jacinda Ardern put it, she simply doesn’t have enough left in the tank.
Sturgeon’s departure triggers a leadership contest between contenders who possess only a fraction of her name and brand recognition. The contest will not be like 2014, when Sturgeon was the self-evident SNP leader in waiting. Sturgeon is said to believe that Kate Forbes, the Scottish finance secretary, possesses, as Napoleon once put it, a marshal’s baton in her knapsack.
Forbes is talented but she is also relatively untested. She also comes from a much less liberal progressive background than either Sturgeon or Salmond. Her views on abortion and gender recognition are not Sturgeon’s. It would be ironic if these views equipped Forbes to reach across the political divide in the way that Sturgeon said today she herself could no longer do.
In the short run, Sturgeon’s successor must navigate what will now be a much less predictable SNP special conference next month on independence strategy. Sturgeon made a point of saying in her resignation speech that her departure would free the SNP to choose its path. But this will not be easy or necessarily successful. The SNP stands or falls on independence.
In the medium term, Sturgeon’s departure robs the SNP of its greatest individual electoral asset. It would be outrageous to claim that the SNP has been a one-woman band, any more than it was a one-man band under Salmond. But the SNP always put Sturgeon front and centre of all its electoral campaigns, and without her there will not be the same allure and confidence. For that reason, today was a very good day for Scottish Labour and for Keir Starmer, who will see their general election chances boosted.
In the long run, though, the big question posed by Sturgeon’s resignation is whether this is the watershed moment for the independence cause that unionists quietly crave and nationalists, if they are frank, still fear. Does her departure mean, and reflect the fact, that the nationalist tide has passed its high point? Is the United Kingdom a little more secure tonight with Sturgeon’s going than it was when she was in the ascendancy? Many will think that the answer is yes. But many have been wrong about this very subject before.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Nicola Sturgeon is resigning as Scotland’s first minister in a move that stunned her pro-independence party and fired the starting pistol on the race to succeed her.
The Scottish National Party leader — who has led the party and the country’s devolved government since 2014 — made the shock announcement at a hastily arranged press conference Wednesday from her official residence in Edinburgh.
Citing the personal toll of the job and a desire to “free” her party to pick its own Scottish independence strategy, Sturgeon, 52, said it had been a “privilege beyond measure” to serve as first minister.
But she confirmed she had asked the SNP’s top brass to “begin the process of electing a new party leader” in the coming days.
Sturgeon will, she said, “remain in office until my successor is elected,” but made clear she believed it was now the “right time” to move on.
“I am proud to stand here as the first female and longest serving incumbent of this office, and I’m very proud of what has been achieved in the years I’ve been in Bute House,” she said.
“However, since my very first moments in the job, I have believed that part of serving well would be to know almost instinctively when the time is right to make way for someone else. And when that time came to have the courage to do so, even if — to many across the country and in my party — it might feel too soon.”
Sturgeon — a vocal opponent of Brexit who has argued that Britain’s departure from the bloc warrants another Scottish independence referendum — is the longest-serving Scottish first minister, and has led her party to successive election victories there.
She remains one of the most popular figures in the drive to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom through a fresh referendum.
But the SNP leader has been embroiled in a row with the British government in recent weeks, after it blocked a bill aimed at reforming Scotland’s gender self-declaration laws. She has also been under fire over the housing of a convicted rapist, who changed their gender, in a women’s prison. That decision was later reversed.
Sturgeon denied that her exit was “a reaction to short-term pressures,” saying her near three decades in frontline politics had toughened her to “navigating choppy waters.”
Instead, she said, the move had come from “a deeper and longer term assessment” of her ability to give the top job its all, as well as a desire not to bind the party’s hands as it mulls its strategy for securing another independence referendum.
Personal and political
Sturgeon has long argued for the next Westminster general election to be used as a de facto referendum on Scottish independence, but with a crucial SNP conference aimed at hashing out an independence strategy slated for next month, the outgoing first minister said she wanted her party to be free “to choose the path that it believes to be the right one, without worrying about the perceived implications for my leadership.”
While Sturgeon stressed she was “not expecting violins,” she also cited the toll of leading Scotland through the COVID-19 pandemic, and said a first minister “is never off duty.”
Sturgeon pointed out that she had been a member of the Scottish Parliament since the age of 29, and in government since the age of 37.
“I’ve literally done this in one capacity or another for all of my life,” she said. “I’ve been Nicola Sturgeon the politician for all of my life.” Now, she said, she could perhaps spend “a little bit of time on Nicola Sturgeon, the human being.”
‘Civil war’
An SNP official said the news had “completely taken aback” staff at the party’s headquarters — and predicted “the beginning of a bitter civil war and factional splits on the next level” in the wake of her exit.
“This is just a completely wild situation,” they said ahead of the conference. “Literally nobody at HQ, even at senior levels — apart from [Sturgeon’s husband and SNP Chief Executive] Peter Murrell, I presume – was briefed.”
The SNP’s ruling national executive committee will set out a leadership election timetable “over the coming days,” Sturgeon said.
Sturgeon succeeded Alex Salmond as first minister in 2014 after the SNP failed in its first referendum bid to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom.
The pair later fell out spectacularly as Salmond faced sexual assault charges, of which he was cleared after a two-week trial.
This developing story is being updated. Emilio Casalicchio and Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
