“I am a human being”: to everyone’s surprise, Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation on Wednesday after eight years in power, a departure which is a blow to the desire for independence in the British nation.
The one who again described Scottish independence on Wednesday as the fight of a lifetime, which she carried with patience and determination in the face of opposition from London, decided to throw in the towel, explaining that she lacked the energy after more than 15 years in positions of responsibility.
Very popular until recently, but weakened by a recent law facilitating gender change in Scotland, the 52-year-old leader told the press in Edinburgh that she would step down as soon as the Scottish National Party (SNP) nominated his successor.
“In my head and in my heart, I know the time has come, that it’s the right time for me, for my party and for the country,” she said, visibly moved, sometimes seeming on the edge. tears.
“This work is a privilege, but also very difficult,” she said. “I am a human being”, pleaded the one who said again in January, after the resignation of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, to have “full of energy”.
“I could have done a few more months, maybe six months, a year,” she said. “But over time I would have had less and less energy for my work and I can only do it 100%, it’s what the country deserves”.
Claiming to have matured her decision for a long time, she cited the changes in her family, the difficulty of being able to “have a coffee with a friend, or go out, alone, for a walk”.
Her departure, with no obvious successor, is a blow to the independence cause, the fight in which she was the undisputed figure, determined and appreciated by the public.
Born in the industrial town of Irvine, south-west of Glasgow, Nicola Sturgeon joined the SNP aged 16 as assistant youth coordinator. Peter Murrell, her husband, is the party’s chief executive.
She took the lead of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish government after the resignation of her predecessor Alex Salmond in 2014. The Scots then voted 55% in favor of remaining within the United Kingdom.
Brexit effect
She had since, with patience and determination, resumed the fight for independence, reinvigorated by the Brexit which the Scots had mainly 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.
Fluctuating, the polls have leaned regularly in favor of a “yes” to independence in recent years, especially during the pandemic whose management by London, under Boris Johnson, was much criticized.
But his electoral strategy of wanting to transform the legislative elections, scheduled in less than two years, into a de facto referendum on secession, was little appreciated by voters.
If she assured not to have made her decision because of “short-term pressures”, Nicola Sturgeon was personally weakened by the adoption in December of a very controversial law facilitating the gender transition, permitted from the age of 16 and without medical opinion.
London has said it wants to oppose it and the measure has been criticized by feminists, including best-selling Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who lives in Scotland. Critics of the text believe that sexual predators can use it to gain access to places reserved for women.
Just after the vote, a scandal came to give water to the mill of its detractors: a transgender woman condemned for having raped women before her transition had been imprisoned in a prison for women, creating strong reactions.
She was eventually transferred to a men’s prison, pushing Nicola Sturgeon into a rare reversal.