​Exit Nicola Sturgeon: Unionist scorn, nationalist praise as SNP leader bows out

The SNP leader said she was not reacting to any “short-term pressures”, and stressed the long-term personal strain her career has taken on her and her family.

Aged 52, she has been a Scottish separatist activist since her mid-teens.

She took on both her current roles in November 2014, replacing Alex Salmond after the Scottish public voted by 55% to 45% to reject independence in September that year.

“In my head and in my heart I know that time is now. That it’s right for me, for my party and my country,” she said.

“If the question is: can I battle on for another few months? Then the answer is yes, of course I can.

“But if the question is: can I give this job everything it demands and deserves for another year – let alone for the remainder of this parliamentary term?

"Give it every ounce of energy that it needs in the way that I have strived to do every day for the last eight years?

"The answer honestly is different.”

Her resignation follows a pummelling from opponents of transgender ideology over the SNP’s backing for a bill making it easier to legally switch gender.

Ms Sturgeon vowed to continue as an MSP until the next election (scheduled for 2026).

She did not mention any potential successor.

She also refused to answer a question about whether she had been interviewed by police – or expects to be questioned – as part of a fraud inquiry.

The probe concerns £600,000 of funds raised from members to fight an independence campaign, which – it is alleged – is suspected of having been partly diverted for other purposes.

She had also faced pressure over a failure to declare a £107,000 loan given to the party in summer 2021 by her husband Peter Murrell (whom she married in 2010, and who has been chief executive of the SNP since 1999).

The reaction from Northern Ireland was split starkly along unionist-nationalist lines.

• Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill said Ms Sturgeon should be “rightly proud” of her career and hailed “the huge strides she has made in advancing the campaign for Scottish independence”.

• SDLP leader Colm Eastwood said: “Nicola’s legacy stretches far beyond Scottish politics.

"She has undeniably demonstrated that a movement for independence is made stronger when you set out an ambitious plan for what a new country will look like, how it will care for its citizens, and how it can deliver on the aspirations of all its people...

"There are lessons in that for those of us who believe in a New Ireland.”

• The DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson offered his “best wishes” to her, saying: “We are on different sides of many debates but her length of service and electoral success must be recognised.”

• Meanwhile TUV leader Jim Allister said: “With polls showing support for maintaining the unity of our country is strong and consistent, Ms Sturgeon – whatever her electoral success – quits as First Minister of a devolved region of the UK, and with her goal of independence a distant pipe dream.

“Her pursuit of a woke agenda when it came to gender recognition was the final nail in her political coffin and should act as warning to other politicians who would seek to go down a similar road.”

• DUP Lagan Valley MLA Jonathan Buckley said: “Nicola Sturgeon’s demise and sudden resignation should be a warning to all those politicians that pander to the woke agenda.

"The public are not fools, they see right through agendas and believe in biological facts that being a man is a man, and a woman a woman.”

• UUP leader Doug Beattie had not issued any statement at time of writing, though his deputy Robbie Butler said: “Nicola Sturgeon was evidently a leader who generated huge swathes of support and wrath in equal measure.

"But as she says ‘I’m a human being’.

"Let her resign in peace and hope that Scotland starts to come together again under new leadership and strengthens as part of team UK.”

• Moore Holmes, a loyalist activist known for his role in the anti-Protocol rallies of recent years, said simply: “A great day for Scotland. A great day for the United Kingdom.”

• And fellow loyalist organiser Jamie Bryson declared: “A good day for Scotland as their hyper-woke, Union-hating separatist resigns.

“It all ends in failure, accelerated by trying to pretend men are women, and women are men."

He added: “Nicola Sturgeon has transitioned. She is now former First Minister of Scotland.”

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