Euan McCombs is a newspaper columnist and political commentator.
Glasgow – It came as a bolt from the blue, by any standards.
When Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, announced her resignation on Wednesday, she stunned Britain’s political establishment.
After all, here is the most successful politician of his generation, leading the SNP to election success after election success. Under Sturgeon, the Nationalists maintain a strong hold on the Scottish Parliament. Meanwhile, it has completely swept its unionist opponents in Scotland in three consecutive UK general elections.
Still aged just 52, Sturgeon was set to celebrate a number of future successes before being passed away from the frontline.
But dig into the details and things are not as straightforward as they may seem. In fact, for all her triumphs, Sturges – through a series of poor judgment calls – is the architect of her own downfall. She jumped before he could push.
promises, promises
In recent months, rows have flared over reform of the Gender Recognition Act, designed to make it easier for people to change their recorded sex, and the next UK general election has been described by Sturgeon as “a de facto referendum”. Manne’s plan has been seriously damaged. , Sturgeon stocks have fallen, buying less.
Before delving into these recent problems, it is worth looking back at the early days of his leadership. Some of Sturgeon’s mistakes are very old.
Following the defeat for the Yes campaign in 2014, Sturgeon succeeded her mentor Alex Salmond as First Minister – and made her first big mistake.
As the SNP’s membership grew from 25,000 to over 130,000 – it decided not to be entirely clear with these enthusiastic new supporters. Instead of explaining that winning the opportunity to stage a second referendum would be incredibly difficult, he assured his followers that the prize was within reach. Another loud, boys, was the message.
Then came a series of developments – the election of a majority Conservative government at Westminster in 2015, the victory of the Brexit campaign in the following year’s referendum on EU membership (while the majority of Scots remained supported), the installation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019 — each of which sturgeon declared support for independence. Each failed to produce the elusive lead that was promised. Instead, most Scots stubbornly refused to do as the First Minister had said they would.
Sturgeon insists that a second independence referendum was just a fluke and moved by a rather prosaic matter of the law of the land. The first minister could promise a referendum every day of the week and twice on Sundays but the power to question the constitution is firmly vested in Westminster.
Inevitably, after years of walking halfway up the hill and then back down, members of the SNP and other independence-supporting Scots began to grow impatient. Where, they wanted to know, was this second referendum talking about sturgeon?
And so, last year, the First Minister announced her intention to hold an independence referendum in October 2023. She asked the UK Supreme Court to confirm that she could legally do so.
Unexpectedly, the court told her that she could not.
After describing the decision as evidence that Scottish democracy was being denied, Sturgeon declared her intention to treat the next UK general election as a de facto referendum. If a majority of Scots support Alba of the pro-independence parties – the SNP, the Scottish Greens and Alex Salmond – she will take it as a directive to start secession talks with the prime minister of the day.
The raw meat was first grabbed at by the minister’s overzealous cadres but political allies saw the problem.
It was not, he told Sturgeon, that any one politician had the power to define the terms of the referendum. A recent paper produced by MP Stewart MacDonald – devotedly SNP leader for years – lays out exactly the problems with the referendum plan: if, by some miraculous stroke, pro-independence parties win a majority of the public vote, So the UK government would insist that no valid referendum had taken place; On the other hand, if the pro-independence parties came up short, London’s response would be that Sturgeon had her second referendum and was defeated a second time. Sturgeon’s plan offered two versions of defeat for the nationalist movement.
McDonald’s paper is due to be discussed next month at a special conference of the SNP called by Sturgeon to fine-tune its referendum strategy. It is not yet clear whether this meeting will go ahead or not.
from bad to worse
Sturgeon’s handling of the case for reform of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) exacerbated her crisis.
A bill that would allow those wishing to change their legal gender through a simple process of self-identification passed in the Scottish Parliament last December with support from members of all parties. It was blocked, last month, by Alister Jack, the Secretary of State for Scotland, on the grounds that it would negatively impact the UK-wide Equality Act, which allows for the provision of single-gender spaces.
Sturgeon declared it a “full-frontal attack” on devolution and promised a legal battle in defense of Scotland’s democracy.
The First Minister was already on shaky ground – most Scots opposed reform of the GRA – when the Isla Bryson case hit the headlines. Before identifying as a woman, Bryson – as Adam Graham – had committed two rapes.
By the time the case came to court, Bryson had begun to transition and, upon conviction, was sent to Cornton Vale Women’s Prison.
Scottish Prison Service policy went ahead of the law and self-ID was accepted when it came to placing convicts in a suitable prison. As the scandal unfolded, Sturgeon intervened and Bryson was sent to a male facility.
In the days that followed, the first minister repeatedly undermined the very foundation of her self-ID law – that people are the gender they say they are – by refusing to say whether she considered Bryson to be a man or a woman. Or not.
Opponents of GRA reform, who raised concerns that the law could be open to abuse by violent men, previously said Sturgeon said their fears were “not valid.” Now it seemed to her that Bryson was not actually trans.
it was a mess – as a Poll recently published Featured in Holyrood Magazine – low support for both the First Minister and the cause of independence.
Sturgeon, once the SNP’s greatest asset, had become a liability. Her party – due to the fact that a minority of Scots who support independence support the SNP – is on course to win the next Holyrood election, but she has failed to advance the nationalist cause.
As a colleague put it: “She understood that to get a majority on the side of independence you have to tread carefully. The people we need to win over are the little conservatives. There’s no unionist voter who would Thinking ‘You know, I’ll take freedom back if only they’ll put rapists in women’s prisons.’
From student activist in the days when nationalism was a minor interest to the longest-serving first minister in the history of the Scottish Parliament, Nicola Sturgeon has enjoyed an extraordinary career.
But his poor judgment eventually caught up with him. He is solely to blame for his own political downfall.