March 13, 2025 - 7:00am
Nicola Sturgeon has announced that she will not be seeking re-election in next year’s Holyrood election. In some ways, the news is as symbolically significant to Scotland’s nationalist movement as the death of Alex Salmond last year. Not in terms of emotional weight or shock: it was somewhat expected after she resigned in disgrace over her party’s financial scandals and her support of the Gender Recognition Reform bill. But it signals the definitive end of an era for the SNP, the wider independence movement and, indeed, British politics.
History will remember the former first minister for consolidating the progressive credentials of the independence movement, shifting it away from a “big tent” in favour of an emphatically Left-wing vision. Like her predecessor Salmond, and the Labour Party, she effectively used English conservatism — particularly the Thatcherite brand — as a bogeyman to stoke nationalist sensibilities.
Unlike Salmond, however, Sturgeon removed the last vestiges of a broad ideological coalition of independence supporters. As the years went on, she was content to alienate Eurosceptics, small c-conservative nationalists and moderates within her party. While it may have put off voters, it made nationalist separatism more palatable to those previously wary of tribal and antagonistic politics. She was ultimately undone by hyper-progressive overreach, coaxed on by the SNP’s weak coalition with the Greens.
John Swinney, who — like his predecessor Humza Yousaf — was viewed as a Sturgeonite continuity candidate, now has an opportunity to rejuvenate the party. Given his expressed commitment in leading beyond the 2026 election and into 2031 — 31 years after he became leader of the party for the first time — there must be a semblance of optimism that he can lift the SNP out of its current visionary stagnation.
Part of the SNP’s challenge has always been that its natural place is in opposition. As a party whose raison d’être is to break up the UK, it’s far easier to capitalise on the failures of the establishment when you are not the establishment. By the time next year’s election rolls around, the SNP will have controlled Scotland’s devolved legislature for 19 years. Polls suggest that the party will win a comfortable majority in 2026. Despite the dramatic resignations of both Sturgeon and Yousaf, Swinney seems to have steadied the ship, if not put the wind in its sails. Only 19% of Scots hold a favourable view of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, making it all the more unlikely that Swinney will have to reform the party in opposition.
Whatever happens next year, unlike in 2004, there is no bombastic, charismatic Salmond-like figure to seize power, shape the party around a common vision, and return the Scottish question to the top of British politics. Under Sturgeon’s progressive leadership, the future stars were supposed to be Humza Yousaf and Mhairi Black; the former is standing down next year, while the latter did not seek re-election as an MP at last year’s general election.
There’s a minute possibility that in the next few years the socially conservative Kate Forbes could have a crack at the top job. If the “vibe shift” that has elected Donald Trump in the US grips Scotland, it is highly unlikely to grip SNP members. And yet progressivism has reached its electoral limit, and the door may open for Forbes.
The safer strategy for the SNP is for Swinney to attempt to return the independence movement to a broad coalition. In such an ideologically fractious climate, this is no small task; but if it truly wants independence, the SNP will need more than just support from the centre-left and far-Left.
Sturgeon kept the party’s power centralised to the point where all decision-making was delegated to a carefully-selected loyalist clique at the top, with dissent below swiftly clamped down on. If Swinney wants to be remembered as more than just a seat-warmer for a new visionary or, worse, a mere Sturgeonite puppet, he must take full advantage of Chief Mammy’s strings finally being cut.
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SubscribeMiddle-aged or old people seem to be supporting the Trans cause. Is this because:
a) They really believe what they say,
b) They really believe that young people want this movement and, so, they are planning for a future,
c) They are cynically looking for the votes of young people.
I’ve long thought that the Bard of Ayrshire must have had a character like Ms Sturgeon in mind when he composd his Address to the Unco’ Guid.
O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours’ fauts and folly!
When the Scot loses his sense of humour he becomes the most obnoxious type of Pharisee. It is precisly what is best in the Scot that requires a careful balancing of idealism and irreverance.
As Catherine Carswell put it in her incomparable Biography of Burns:
“That the Scot escaped from callousness was in great measure due to his inveterate love of bawdry. That he escaped from abjectness was in equal measure due to his mania for metaphysics. He kept one hand upon the common heart of life: with the other he reached out into the unknown. So it has always been with the Scot, and so will always be as long as there are Scotsmen. When he discards the first characteristic he becomes a prig, where the second, an inferior. Both bawdry and the Bible are needed for the entire Scot”
For the ‘Bible’ put whatever conventional scheme of piety dominates the age.
‘Callous (Neo)Priggery’ – Sturgeonism in a nutshell.
Watch this space
Independence is a absolute certainty
But keep a Hawks Eye upon
Wee Katie Forbes and something ,99.9 % of The Establishment, the MSM and the English chattering classes will undoubtedly be completely unaware and in all probability dismiss what I speak off Next
Kate Forbes is a ” Wee Free ”
go Google what that is
But as someone who was married to one whose family and friends were also ” Wee Frees ”
Believe me wrong them and you have just created the Worst possible enemy you could possibly
Ever encounter
But here is the Rub
You will never ever know such untill
You defeated
I should change your monika to Babbling Brian. Are you trying to be poetic? Utter drivel
Mrs Forbes’ worship in the Free Church is widely known (its the one thing most people do know about her) and formed the very public back-story to her failed leadership bid.
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64715944
Huh
If her ass gets any bigger she will need knickers made from parachutes.
Does anyone outside the SNP bubble care any more?
From a distance, folk seem to have accepted that “once in a generation” means what it says, apart from a small number of campaigning zealots. So there will presumably not be another referendum any year soon.
So what is the point of the SNP in 2025, other than to ensure well-paid public sector and / or political jobs for its insiders?
Asking for a friend, as the saying goes…
It never ceases to amaze me that the writer refers to individuals like Ms Sturgeon and her party as “progressive” and in this article as even possessing “hyper-progressive overreach” when nothing could be further from the truth. There’s nothing progressive about her appallingly dishonest behaviour that went on over all those years she was apparently being “progressive”.
As the writer reminds us, “Sturgeon kept the party’s power centralised to the point where all decision-making was delegated to a carefully-selected loyalist clique at the top, with dissent below swiftly clamped down on.” That sounds a teensy bit like Stalin to me and we know those marxists really, really like to think they’re “progressive”.
I suppose you could say she and her husband seem to have “progressively” kept purloining party funds but now I seem to be missing my own point!!
The SNP’s problem is that the Scots don’t want to leave the UK because they know that leaving Britain would be leaving themselves. Scotland is an integral part of Britain in a way that IRL never was.