LONDON — Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish government and a powerful figure in the drive for Scottish independence, said on Wednesday that she would step down after more than eight years in the role.
She said her decision, which was unexpected, came “from a place of duty and of love” and was not a reaction to short-term pressures.
“This decision comes from a deeper and longer-term assessment,” Ms. Sturgeon, 52, said during a news conference at Bute House, her official residence in Edinburgh. “I know it seems sudden, but I have been wrestling with it, with oscillating levels of intensity, for some weeks.”
She said she would stay in the role until her successor was in place.
Ms. Sturgeon’s party, the Scottish National Party, remains the dominant political force in Scotland, though her departure comes at a particularly fraught time for the party, with a dispute over a new policy intended to make it easier for people to legally change their gender, and debate within the party about plans for a second referendum on Scottish independence. The push for independence is a founding goal of the party, and Ms. Sturgeon has been at the forefront of the continued efforts for Scotland to liberate itself from the United Kingdom.
“The cause of independence is so much bigger than any one individual,” Ms. Sturgeon said on Wednesday. “I believe I have led this country closer to independence,” she said, noting that Scotland was “in the final phase of that journey.”
Ms. Sturgeon is Scotland’s longest-serving first minister and took over from her predecessor in 2014 on the heels of Scottish voters rejecting independence from the rest of the United Kingdom in a referendum.
Last month, Ms. Sturgeon said in an interview with the BBC that she had “plenty in the tank” to continue leading Scotland and was “nowhere near ready” to step down from the role.
She has recently been embroiled in a dispute over the Scottish government’s policy of gender self-declaration, which had erupted after a convicted rapist, Isla Bryson, was incarcerated in a women’s prison.
Ms. Sturgeon, who joined the pro-independence Scottish National Party when she was 16, has spent her time in office vying for Scotland to secure as much additional power over its own affairs as possible. Last year, she announced new plans for another Scottish independence referendum that would take place in October 2023, reopening the question of whether Scotland would secede from Britain in what would be the second vote on Scottish independence in a decade.
“Being your first minister has been the privilege of my life,” Ms. Sturgeon said on Wednesday. “Nothing, absolutely nothing I do in my future, will ever come close.”
The New York Times
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