Nicola Sturgeon resigns from Scotland’s top job

Scotland’s longest-serving First Minister has resigned amid plummeting approval ratings and after losing a court ruling on a fresh independence referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon speaking at Bute House in Edinburgh where she announced she will stand down as First Minister of Scotland.

Fighting back tears, Nicola ­Sturgeon has resigned as Scotland’s First Minister after eight years as leader, declaring the ­decision “was not a reaction to short-term pressures”.

At a news conference in Edinburgh on Wednesday night (AEDT) to announce her shock resignation, Ms Sturgeon admitted she was such a divisive figure that someone else was needed to bring the country behind the ­independence agenda.

The 52-year-old said she would stay on until a new leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party was elected in coming months – though no obvious successor ­appears ready to step up.

Public support for Ms Sturgeon has plunged. A recent poll showed 42 per cent wanted her to depart immediately in the wake of the highly controversial gender recognition bill. “Part of ­serving well is to know when the time is right to make way for someone else, and when the time comes to have the courage to do so,” Ms Sturgeon said.

“In my head and in my heart I know that time is now, that it is right for me, my party and the country.”

Ms Sturgeon had been embroiled in twin battles in recent months, ­including losing a Supreme Court decision that she had banked on to force through a fresh referendum on Scotland’s independence without support from Westminster.

She was then positioning the party to try to use the next general election in two years as a de facto referendum vote.

The most recent political pressure came from her strident insistence to push through the Gender Recognition Bill, which reduced barriers for transgender people to legally identify, without any medical diagnosis, as being of another gender.

Ms Sturgeon waves from the steps of her official residence Bute House in Edinburgh.

The ramifications of the bill meant young people of 16 could legally change their gender by simply proclaiming it.

That controversial bill, pushed through by the SNP, backfired when trans woman Isla Bryson was convicted of committing two rapes as a man before she self-identified as a woman. Bryson was sent to a woman’s prison, causing such public concern about the risk to vulnerable women that the Scottish prison authorities reversed the decision and sent her to a male prison.

Ms Sturgeon’s bungling about what constituted a woman created deep divisions in her party.

She then backtracked, claiming rapists should not be in a women’s prison, but she suffered political damage within her own party.

The Women’s Rights Network tweeted: “We repeatedly warned Nicola Sturgeon. She repeatedly refused to listen. We remind all politicians and candidates that #SexMatters #WomenMatter and they will be held to account if they don’t.”

Ms Sturgeon said after her resig­nation speech that the trans issue was “not the final straw”.

“I have faced more short-term issues than I care to remember,” she said.

She added, however, that she regretted “not able to bring a more ­rational approach to this debate; this one in particular right now is obviously controversial”.

On the independence question, Ms Sturgeon said voters needed a different leader about whom they did not have their minds already made up.

Ms Sturgeon says ‘the time is right to make way for someone else’, but there is no obvious successor within the Scottish Nationalist Party.

“I am firmly of the view there is now majority support for independence and it needs to be solidified … to achieve that, we must reach across the divide in Scottish politics,” she said.

“A new leader will be better able to do this … not someone who is subject to some polarised opinions as I now am.”

Ms Sturgeon’s former mentor Alex Salmond, now the leader of minority party Alba, had accused her of “throwing away” the impetus for Scottish independence.

Ms Sturgeon said she thought about stepping down “with oscillating intensity” for some weeks but attending a funeral service on Monday of an independence ­activist, confirmed to her she was making the right decision.

“I feel that duty first and foremost to our country to ensure that it has the energy of leadership that it needs not just today but through the years that remain of this parliamentary term,” she said.

“And right now, in a very particular sense, I feel that duty to my party too. We are at a critical ­moment. The blocking of our referendum as the accepted constitutional route to independence is a democratic outrage … By making my decision clear now, I free the SNP to choose the path it believes to be the right one without worrying about the perceived implications for my leadership.”