Nicola Sturgeon is departing. Scotland is still heading towards independence

To view the first minister's departure as a victory for Unionism is to miss the forces propelling Britain towards break-up

Very occasionally leaders surprise us. Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to stand down as Scotland’s first minister defied the convention that those at the top cling to the trappings of power until the very end. Boris Johnson had to be dragged out of Downing Street. Sturgeon’s resignation was an act of rare integrity. Screen out the immediate political noise, and her departure will not hold back the tide carrying Scotland towards independence.

The noise has concentrated on Sturgeon’s recent troubles. She has been engulfed in a bitter, and lose-lose, political argument about gender recognition laws. A fair assessment of her stewardship would also note a less than glowing performance in managing Scotland’s ailing health service. More fundamentally, many in her own Scottish National party opposed her intention to treat the next national election in Scotland as a surrogate vote on independence.

These are the travails political leaders expect. Sturgeon’s insistence her decision was rooted in more fundamental assessment has the ring of truth. This was her third term as Scotland’s first minister. Eight years as Scotland’s leader, she admitted, had taken their toll. Sturgeon knew that soon enough she would have had to decide whether to bid for a fourth term in 2025. If the answer to that question was going to be no, then the honest thing was to bequeath now the big choices the SNP will need to make in pursuit of independence. And, yes, she was exhausted. 

Among Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives her departure is seen as a victory. Sunak has followed Johnson in refusing the SNP a referendum on independence. The decision has been upheld by the Supreme Court. More recently, the prime minister had fuelled the controversy in Scotland about transgender rights by blocking a law passed by the Holyrood parliament. Seen from little England, Sturgeon had been outwitted. With her own party equivocal about her plan to treat the next general election as a proxy referendum, the UK had been made safe.

Such thinking is delusional. Sure, Sturgeon will be hard to match as an advocate for independence. For all the recent troubles her ratings among voters remain much higher than those of, say, Sunak. Her successor is uncertain, though finance minister Kates Forbes is a lead contender. The basic reality, though, is that the dynamics pushing Scotland towards a constitutional break with the UK are unchanged. 

During the 2014 independence referendum, the issue of Europe was on the side of unionists north and south of the border. Scotland, it could be argued, had the best of both worlds.

It gained, not least financially, from its position within the UK. Over time, the Holyrood parliament could also push out the boundaries of self-government. British membership of the European Union for its part provided a framework for Scotland’s ties to continental neighbours and, incidentally, a constraint on the authority of the Westminster government. To take one example, Scotland was a big beneficiary of the free movement of people in the EU single market. This was never be enough for many nationalists, but it secured a majority for the union in the referendum.

Post-Brexit, what could once be called a partnership looks like a relationship between master and servant. Scotland voted to remain in the EU, but the ballots of the English have locked it out. The London government has grabbed for itself the powers returned to the UK from Brussels. Decisions on whether EU nationals are offered visas to work in Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow are taken by officials at the Home Office in London. Scots can no longer choose to be at once “British” and “European”. 

In the short-term, Sturgeon’s departure doubtless will intensify the debate within the SNP as to how best to pursue the independence cause in the face of Sunak’s intransigence on the referendum. Opinion surveys show that for now Scottish voters remain fairly evenly split about the union. The UK-wide general election due by January 2025 will add another layer of complexity if, as the polls suggest, the Tories are replaced at Westminster by Keir Starmer’s Labour party. 

For all that, the political currents are still running in favour of nationalists. In their scornful condescension, none have matched the eloquence of Johnson and his Brexiter chums in making the case for the break-up of Britain. Sturgeon’s was denied an immediate vote, but presided over an ineluctable shift in Scotland’s national mood. 

The SNP has exercised power at Holyrood for 16 years. Scotland’s political detachment from London is palpable. Young people have grown ever more hostile to the nation’s position of subservience within the UK as Conservatives have embraced the English nationalism of the party’s anti-European fundamentalists. The polls show that among the under-35s two-thirds or more of Scottish voters back independence. 

For all that it may discomfit the SNP in the short term, Sunak’s refusal to allow a referendum adds force to the nationalist case against Westminster rule. The prolonged post-Brexit stagnation of the UK economy does likewise. Time is on the side of the SNP. Conservative or Labour, the government in London cannot indefinitely refuse an independence vote. Sturgeon’s successor may have to wait 5 years, perhaps longer. But the direction of travel is clear.