A year ago today, Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation as SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland. The consensus was that her departure from the political frontline would be a blow to both her party and the wider Scottish independence movement. After almost nine years as First Minister, Sturgeon left office as a dominant figure in Scottish politics, with positive approval ratings and revered by her followers and respected by opponents as a significant talent. Of course her sudden resignation was going to have repercussions. But nobody could have predicted just how chaotic things would become.
Twelve months after Sturgeon’s announcement sent shockwaves through the British political establishment, support for the SNP continues to fall. Scottish Labour, so recently written off as a spent force, is on the up. Polling of Westminster voting intention now shows the party neck and neck with the nationalists. Meanwhile Sturgeon’s successor as party leader and First Minister Humza Yousaf is struggling to stamp his authority on a fractured SNP.
Of course Sturgeon’s sudden resignation was going to have repercussions. But nobody could have predicted just how chaotic things would become.
The leadership contest to succeed Sturgeon was frequently testy. Those competing for the position of SNP leader took their personal grievances onto TV screens in displays of infighting never seen under Sturgeon’s reign. Former finance secretary Kate Forbes – a devout Christian and member of the socially conservative Free Church of Scotland – told an interviewer that, had she been an elected member at the time, she would have voted against legalising same-sex marriage. This saw a number of senior figures brief heavily against her. There was no way someone holding such views could lead the ‘progressive’ SNP. In the end, Forbes finished a close second behind Humza Yousaf. After the third candidate Ash Regan was knocked out in the first round of voting, Yousaf defeated Forbes with just 52 per cent to her 48 per cent. (Regan was soon to defect to Alex Salmond’s Alba Party, which she now represents at Holyrood.)
On winning the contest, Yousaf – in a clear sign he regarded Forbes a continuing threat – tried to demote her. Forbes rejected the offer of the rural affairs brief and opted to return to the backbenches. Many suspect she is considering a second bid for the job if Yousaf were to lead the SNP to heavy general election losses. During last year’s contest, it suited Yousaf perfectly to be known as the ‘continuity’ candidate. But he would come to regret the patronage of Sturgeon, whose popularity plummeted after the police probe ‘Operation Branchform’ came to light.
A week after Yousaf became First Minister, on 5 April 2023, officers from Police Scotland raided SNP HQ in Edinburgh and Sturgeon’s home in Glasgow. Her husband Peter Murrell had not long resigned his position after a row about the release of bogus party membership figures before he was arrested and taken in for questioning over a police probe into the party’s finances. Across the world, media broadcast astonishing footage of cops erecting tents in Sturgeon’s garden.
Then it emerged that the SNP’s accountants had resigned around October 2022 after reviewing the party’s client portfolio. Had Sturgeon not already quit, these developments would surely have made it impossible for her to continue as in her role. The arrest of former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie on 18 April 2023 led to further questions about how the party had been run during the Sturgeon-Murrell era. And even if Sturgeon had decided to ride out those crises, her own arrest (and subsequent release pending further investigation) on 11 June would have sealed her political fate. That police investigation continues on, with no one as yet charged.
Announcing her resignation last year, Sturgeon said she had done all she could in trying to advance the independence cause and it was time for someone else to bring new ideas to that crusade. After the events of the months that followed, some began to speculate that she’d jumped before police activity made her position impossible. But the party was facing other problems too.
In the months before her resignation, Sturgeon had suffered a number of political failures. An expensive court action confirmed that, despite her promise to SNP members that a second independence referendum would be held in October 2023, the Scottish government had no authority to run such a vote. Her solution – that the next general election should be treated as a ‘de facto’ referendum – horrified some of her most senior colleagues who saw the plan as a recipe for polling day disaster.
Then followed the miserable failure of her flagship plan to reform the gender bill, introducing self-ID for those wishing live in an assumed sex. Sturgeon ignored warnings from legal experts and feminist campaigners that changing the law on gender recognition in Scotland would negatively impact on the UK-wide Equality Act (2010) which protects the provision of single-sex spaces, such as women’s refuges. Sturgeon sneered at such concerns, branding some critics of the gender bill reforms homophobes and even racists. But selfie queen Sturgeon had seriously misjudged the public mood. When the Scotland Secretary Alister Jack announced that he’d use the provisions of Section 35 of the Scotland Act to block the legislation on the grounds that it would hit the Equality Act, there was no roar of public outcry. In fact, a large of number of Sturgeon’s colleagues were perfectly happy for Jack to have acted as he did.
From the backbenches, his predecessor continues to damage Yousaf and the nationalist mission.
Rather than try to carve his own identity, Yousaf wasted time and scarce political capital by picking up his predecessor’s fight to reform the gender bill. Despite polling showing a majority of Scots did not support the law, Yousaf pushed ahead with a costly – and unsuccessful – legal bid to overturn Jack’s ruling. When Edinburgh’s Court of Session ruled that the Scotland Secretary had acted entirely legitimately, SNP spin that this was ‘a dark day for devolution’ energised only the most devout of the party’s followers.
It emerged last November that former health secretary Michael Matheson had claimed £11,000 in expenses for mobile data run up during a family holiday and then lied about the circumstances. Matheson initially insisted the charges had been incurred while he used his parliament-provided iPad to carry out constituency work before finally admitting that his teenage sons had been streaming live football matches while in Morocco. Yet Yousaf chose not to sack him. Rather, the First Minister repeatedly defended Matheson as a man of integrity. He continued in this vein up until Matheson’s resignation last week, in advance of a report which is expected to show he misled Holyrood’s presiding officer and senior civil servants about his expenses claim. In standing by Matheson, despite polling evidence that a majority of Scots thought this was clear-cut sacking matter, Yousaf showed a lack of understanding of – or, worse, interest in – legitimate public anger about what was a clear case of ‘one rule for them, one rule for us’.
But not all blows to the current First Minister are self-inflicted. From the backbenches, his predecessor continues to damage Yousaf and the nationalist mission. During the pandemic, Sturgeon was asked whether she would make all of her communications – including WhatsApp messages – to a future public inquiry. She seemed irritated even to be asked. Of course she would. Yet in advance of Sturgeon’s appearance before the Covid Inquiry, it emerged that she had deleted her WhatsApps from her phone. Sturgeon insisted she had acted in accordance with Scottish government guidelines but this explanation didn’t change the fact she had broken her promise. The families of Covid victims were incensed.
When Sturgeon resigned a year ago, she was a heroine of the SNP. Yousaf was confident about the future. How things have changed. Now, Yousaf’s divided party is losing support by the day and many are laying the blame at Sturgeon’s door.
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