Champagne socialists will be popping corks as Sturgeon goes

Scottish Labour – by happy coincidence holding its spring conference in Edinburgh this weekend with Sir Keir due to speak on Sunday – believes whoever replaces Ms Sturgeon won’t be anywhere near as effective as she has been. One candidate claimed: “This puts 14, 15, 16 seats up for grabs.”

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Indeed, the chief comrade hopes it could be more and help him get Labour not just into power but also with a working Commons majority.

And one senior UK Government insider said the SNP leader’s departure meant the “case for independence is massively weaker,” adding: “It’s the best day since we won the independence referendum. It’s a generational setback for independence and a generational boost for unionism.”

One Labour source was blunter: “Independence is dead.”

It was only four weeks ago the FM, following the New Zealand premier's sudden resignation, insisted she was “nowhere near” ready to quit and, referencing Jacinda Ardern’s metaphor, insisted she had “plenty in the tank” to carry on. But now we know differently; Ms Sturgeon was wrestling with the same demons.

By sheer coincidence, four days before her announcement a poll emerged, suggesting 42% of Scots wanted the FM to resign immediately while 45% wanted her to stay until the 2026 Holyrood election, seemingly confirming something was in the air about public opinion on Ms Sturgeon’s future.

Not only that, another snapshot on independence said only 37% of people backed it with 48% against and 12% don’t knows; the lowest showing for the Yes campaign since March 2019.

For the SNP to lose such a dominant political figure naturally leaves a huge hole and raises many questions about the party’s strategy on independence.

As I write ahead of the executive’s meeting last night, it seems inconceivable the March 19 special conference will go ahead because, by then, the new leader would almost certainly not have emerged. What if he or she didn’t agree with its decision on a de facto referendum? How on earth could they lead the party down a road they did not believe in?

It could throw the whole leadership contest into disarray. Which would be very bad because none of the possible contenders to replace Ms Sturgeon is, at present, setting the heather on fire.

Last weekend in a poll of potential successors, by far the favourite candidate was someone by the name of Don’t Know, registering 69% of the vote. Kate Forbes, the Scottish Finance Secretary, received 7% public support, John Swinney, the Deputy FM, 6%, Angus Robertson, the External Affairs Secretary, 5% and Stephen Flynn, the party’s Westminster leader, 3%.

Even among Yes and SNP supporters the lack of enthusiasm was remarkable with Ms Forbes polling just 10%, ahead of Mr Robertson, the ex-Westminster leader and currently the bookies’ favourite, on 8%.

And in any leadership election divisions emerge as we saw in last summer’s Conservative spectacle.

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Will the winner support Ms Sturgeon’s preference for turning the 2024 General Election into a de facto independence referendum or, as some colleagues prefer, concentrate on painstakingly building that overwhelming majority of Scottish public opinion for breaking away from the UK?

And will he or she continue with the controversial gender reform bill or shy away from a legal challenge against the UK Government’s Section 35 Order to think again? They will have until mid-April to make any challenge.

Outside forces could also pile the pressure on the SNP. It was intriguing to hear Kenny MacAskill, one of the party’s former leading lights and now Alba’s deputy leader, suggest the leadership of the independence movement should now be taken out of the hands of the Scottish Government and itself become independent; which some may interpret as a tendentious bid to make Alex Salmond once again chieftain of the Yes campaign.

It seems clear, like Ms Ardern, the FM was beginning to suffer from an accumulation of cumbersome controversies with an acceptance that, having been at the helm for so many years, her captaincy was increasingly becoming a distraction to the debate on a number of major issues.

Where once the ex-New Zealand PM was riding high because of her leadership during the pandemic, her Labour Party has recently fallen to its lowest poll level since it came into government in 2017 with public concerns over cost-of-living pressures and crime numbers. Not only that, an election is due in October.

Nicola Sturgeon's resignation has been compared to the resignation of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (Image: Newsquest)

Similarly, Ms Sturgeon has been under the cosh not only on education and health targets but also on teachers’ strikes, her failure to deliver independence or even a path towards it, the de facto referendum, the ferries fiasco, the deposit return scheme, and the gender reform bill.

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It became increasingly clear her political trajectory had reached Peak Sturgeon and was now on a downward path.

Now, wisely, she has decided to leave the stage not under a cloud because of one unfortunate event or at the hands of disgruntled colleagues, as happened with the last four Conservative prime ministers, but because she simply had had enough.

Gratitude is very often absent in politics, particularly across the political divide. But as Sir Keir and Mr Sarwar reflect on the broken tranquillity of a recess week, they will be thanking their lucky stars that one of their key opponents, who has won landslide victory after landslide victory, is, unexpectedly, leaving the stage and, if that were not enough, with a general election on the horizon.

Champagne socialists will be popping corks across Westminster and Holyrood.