Scotland: surprise resignation of separatist Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon

Published on : 02/15/2023 – 12:16Modified : 02/15/2023 – 12:30

Scottish independence Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon, weakened by a recent law facilitating gender transition, announced her resignation on Wednesday, February 15, after eight years in power, dealing a blow to the independence cause in the British nation.

“In my head and in my heart, I know that the time has come, that it is the right time for me, for my party and for the country, and I therefore announce today my intention to resign as Prime Minister and leader of my party,” Nicola Sturgeon told a press conference. She will remain in office until the Scottish National Party appoints a new leader.

The 52-year-old leader, who has long remained very popular, was fighting for a new independence referendum.

In January, after the surprise resignation of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Nicola Sturgeon assured that she still had “full energy” and that she did not feel “at all near” when she should leave .

The separatist had arrived at the head of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish government after the resignation of his predecessor, Alex Salmond, in 2014. The Scots then voted 55% in favor of remaining within the Kingdom -United.

Many electoral successes

Nicola Sturgeon has since, with patience and determination, resumed the fight for independence, reinvigorated by Brexit, which the majority of Scots had opposed. She has since been fighting for the organization of a new vote, firmly rejected by London.

She has accumulated electoral successes, obtaining once again in May 2021 a pro-independence majority in the local Parliament with the Greens.

But it was weakened by the adoption, in December, of a very controversial law facilitating gender transition, permitted from the age of 16 and without medical advice.

London said it wanted to oppose it and, just after the vote, a scandal came to provide grist for the mill of its detractors: a transgender woman convicted of raping women before her transition had been incarcerated in a women’s prison , creating strong reactions. She was eventually transferred to a men’s prison.

Involved in politics from the age of 16

Born in the industrial town of Irvine, south-west of Glasgow, to an electrician father and a nurse mother, still active in politics, Nicola Sturgeon joined the SNP aged 16 as a Assistant Youth Coordinator.

Peter Murrell, her husband, is the party’s chief executive. The childless couple met more than twenty years ago at a meeting of SNP youth, of which Nicola Sturgeon became one of the first representatives in the Scottish Parliament when it was created in 1999.

With AFP