Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon on Wednesday unexpectedly announced she would resign after eight years as Scotland’s first minister.
Sturgeon said she knows the “time is now” for her to stand down, adding that it is “right for me, for my party and for the country.” The Scottish National Party leader made the announcement at a press conference in Edinburgh. She will stay in office until a new SNP leader is appointed,
Less than a month ago, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon said she still had “plenty in the tank” following the shock resignation of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern.
Now the 52-year-old is headed out the door.
“First, though I know it will be tempting to see it as such, this decision is not a reaction to short-term pressures,” said Sturgeon, who has been facing increasing tensions with the UK government in London over Scottish independence, as well as Westminster’s decision to block a Scottish law intended to allow trans people in Scotland to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis.
“This decision comes from a deeper and longer-term assessment,” she added.
Sturgeon said she could no longer give her full energy to the job, and that she felt she must say so now. “I have been wrestling with it, albeit with oscillating levels of intensity for some weeks,” the 52-year-old leader said. “Giving absolutely everything of yourself to this job is the only way to do it.”
She said it was difficult to have a private life, noting it was hard to “meet friends for a coffee or go for a walk on your own” and observed that there was a “brutality” to life at the top.
Sturgeon added that she hoped her successor would be “someone who is not subject to the same polarized opinions, fair or unfair, as I now am.”
Wednesday’s shock announcement led to breathless speculation over Sturgeon’s timing, particularly as she had only recently pledged to make the next British general election a de-facto second referendum on Scottish independence.
