As an Englishman, I've been impressed with how mature and competent the Scottish leaders have seemed in comparison with their English counterparts; I don't know if it's a systemic or cultural thing (or just my imagination), but as a representative of that tendency I'm sad to see her go.
Sturgeon was competent at enforcing party unity and winning Scottish elections. But in terms of actually achieving things for Scotland, both her and the SNP have failed. It's a one issue party so in terms of independence:
- Support for independence is now lower than when she took the reigns. That by itself must count as failure on the SNP's own terms.
- Lost the "once in a generation" referendum and then refused to accept the result, campaigning for years for a second referendum she had already agreed wouldn't happen.
- Made zero progress on reducing subsidy dependency on England, creating the widespread impression that the SNP doesn't really want Scotland to be independent. Many other specific issues around independence also have been ignored despite the lack of answers being one of the issues causing their referendum loss.
- Done everything possible to piss off the neighbours across the border, like encouraging anti-English rhetoric that would be considered grotesquely racist if there was a skin color difference.
And in non-referendum areas:
- Poverty and poor health are worse in Scotland than England.
- She said she wanted to be judged on closing education gaps, but they didn't close.
- The economy is worse.
- Social policy is totally reactive. Under Sturgeon the SNP just tended to copy whatever England was doing but making it more extreme, without any obvious guiding principles. The gender self-ID fiasco is a good example of that. 2/3rds of voters are against it and Salmond says it's done more damage to the independence campaign than anything else (which says a lot about the strength of that campaign). She didn't think through the consequences and when faced with the reality of what it means in the Isla Bryson case, flailed around and couldn't articulate a coherent response. Total incompetence.
- Scotland has quietly developed a reputation for corruption and weak institutions, with problems you don't see elsewhere in the country.
The nasty Salmond/Sturgeon affair was one example, and her resignation is likely triggered by the police finally starting to investigate where £600,000 of donated money was apparently embezzled to. The way she "can't recall" that her husband lent over £100,000 to the SNP is another symptom of this sort of thing.
> - Lost the "once in a generation" referendum and then refused to accept the result, campaigning for years for a second referendum she had already agreed wouldn't happen.
Many voted no to remain in the EU, only to have the rug pulled out from under them anyway. That surely justifies a redo.
It's not relevant to the point I made though is it? She promised to respect the result for the long term and that was a bald-faced lie made for pure political advantage.
But to address your point: why? They knew when voting that there was likely to be a referendum on the EU in the future, the pressure for that had been building for years, and Scotland has its own eurosceptics that wanted to remain in the UK and also leave the EU.
Also, the idea of an "independence" movement that wants to immediately give up that independence to join another union seems like a contradiction. The SNP is the Scottish Nationalist Party but the EU hates nationalists, they routinely say things like this:
> 'Nationalism is like alcoholism: a short period of exaltation followed by a long period of headaches' - @TimmermansEU against nationalism.
If the SNP was a coherent party with a principled set of positions it would have needed to resolve this contradiction at some point, but like many other such contradictions they never did. It doesn't act like a nationalist party, it acts like a bog standard centre left party (hard left on id politics), with relatively little interest in any theory of nations.
It's like making a deal with someone that gives you promises (or in this case "vows") then afterwards turns around and negates then all and then completely changes the rules of the game (in this case Brexit).
Remember one big reason that people voted no for independence is that there wasn't full clarity whether Scotland could remain in the EU if they left Britain. They'd have to start a whole ascension process.
I've never been to Scotland but some friends live there and they really should have a second chance to escape.
> anti English rhetoric culminating in abuse, vandalism and physical assault are now common place in Scotland and happen daily (15 per day) according to Scottish police statistics.
My hobby horse is more representative voting systems and the one in place in Scotland encourages people to aim for broad suppport rather than be loved and hated by a minority.
To be honest, in comparison to the last 5 years of the Tory part, Sturgeon is quite competent.
The only proper scandal I remember is the Salmond case, and then in terms of being incompetent the only thing which is undisputable is how badly she has handled the Scottish drug policy/crisis.
Ironically, I was always very impressed with Salmond as well, he seemed to be on a different level, wit and intelligence wise to his English colleagues. It all obviously got a bit grimy with him and Sturgeon at the end, so I didn't mention it.
There has also been the recent trans policy heat (not to say she is on the wrong side, I have no idea) and the finance debacle that Private Eye has been tracking.
So yes, they are hardly pure, but just seem generally more professional and trustworthy.
Ha, well I did have the misfortune the other day to stumble on to a piece in The National and was depressed at the blatant anti-Englishness, especially in the toxic comments, which would have been condemned as racism with any other target or in any other mainstream publication.
As an occassional reader of Scottish discussions as well, the double standards are striking.
Compared to those discussions and their anti-English tenor, "the unmentionable" Tommy Robinson was a positively mild and mellow-tempered critic of Islam.
I get why Ukrainians hate Russians; but there is nowhere near as much real blood between the English and the Scots. There shouldn't be that much hate, unless deliberately stoked.
You don't remember any except the salmond case because the left wing media treat the SNP very softly. There were lots of scandals during her time, e.g. the ferries disaster, the current gender self id / rapist case, the missing 660k, her regular faked inability to recall critical facts when questioned about things, breaking her own mask mandate, threatening to prosecute MSPs if they spoke against Sturgeon, the attempt to take complete power over from the Scottish Parliament via a pandemic law etc.
