Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation is a massive political event. We shall return to that. But it is also something more, and this too is massive. Her resignation is a warning. The warning is best summed up in 10 plain words spoken by Scotland’s first minister in her surprise announcement in Edinburgh on Wednesday: “I am a human being as well as a politician.”
Politicians do not ask for pity, love or praise. Too often, however, they get only cynicism, abuse and even, in another word carefully chosen by Ms Sturgeon this week, brutality. This is particularly true of women politicians, who still have to cope with intolerable attentions and pressures that men are often spared.
What Ms Sturgeon said on Wednesday is concerning and shaming. A modern leader is never off duty, never has privacy, is unable to do “ordinary stuff” like go for a walk, and is spotlit and held to account with far greater ferocity than in the past. The responsibilities are immense, and so is the physical and mental impact.
Ms Sturgeon is not the first leader to succumb to the pressures, as Jacinda Ardern showed. Nor will she be the last. This attrition of talent and decency should make us reflect. The polarised attack culture, for which the media bear a large responsibility, is a social evil; its civic consequences are dire. Politicians, women politicians in particular, should not have to endure it. If we are not careful, politics risks becoming the preserve of the wealthy, the corrupt, the brutal and the brazen.
To be clear, for many years Ms Sturgeon gave as good as she got. Behind the brilliant communicator and landslide election winner was a tough and sometimes ruthless operator. She would not have survived for 16 years at the summit of politics without both sets of abilities. But Scotland is not the only place that urgently needs something better than the politics of angry noise.
Ms Sturgeon has not resigned simply because she has had enough. She is still by some distance the most popular politician in Scotland, though her numbers have dipped. Her Scottish National party remains politically ascendant, still backed by 44% of voters in a Holyrood match-up and 42% in a Westminster one.
She is going, above all, because her independence referendum strategy – the heart of what she and her party stand for – has run out of road. Her attempt to cast the next UK election as a proxy referendum is on the verge of collapse, a testament to her wider failure to leverage the SNP’s many electoral victories into another independence vote in an attempt to reverse the failure of 2014.
More immediately, her domestic policies are also facing a concatenation of criticism. Her handling of gender recognition reform has made her unpopular. Her promises on the NHS, education, public services and roads have not been fulfilled. Her government is in trouble over costly ferry-building projects and disputes over its deposit return scheme. Her party is being investigated by police over financial transparency issues, including a £107,000 loan from her husband.
Ms Sturgeon’s road has ended. The SNP’s rivals, especially Labour, naturally sense an opportunity. They should not assume this tolls the knell for independence. David Cameron misread the signs after the referendum in 2014. The result was a huge swing to the SNP. As Ms Sturgeon in turn now quits the scene, neither Conservatives nor Labour should repeat Mr Cameron’s mistake of thinking that traditional UK politics will re-establish themselves in Scotland either soon or easily.
