Could 2023 be Nicola Sturgeon’s last as First Minister? – The Scotsman

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There is a photograph of Nicola Sturgeon, working on papers with her shoeless feet tucked up on the sofa, that looks as if the First Minister is recreating one of Lady Thatcher’s most famous poses.

But as 2023 begins there may be another form of imitation that Ms Sturgeon might not wish to follow – the possibility of being removed from office not by the electorate but by members of her own party.

Certainly she does not start the year as strongly as she did the last. If she did, Ian Blackford would still be leading the SNP group at Westminster and would not have been usurped by Stephen Flynn. Amidst all the talk of the legality of a second independence referendum, the SNP at Westminster seems to have declared a Unilateral Declaration of Independence without letting anybody else have a vote.

Back in 1990 when she was dethroned, Mrs Thatcher faced three issues. Firstly, the fact that she appeared never willing to demit office. Secondly, on the long term issue of Europe, she spoke in a way increasingly at odds with other senior members of her Party. Thirdly, in the short term there was the unpopularity of the poll tax. The mix proved toxic and politically fatal.

Ms. Sturgeon has u-turned on hints that she might step down. Now she is pledging to go on and on, the much vaunted, or delusional, international job having not materialised.

On her core issue of a referendum there is not the unity in the SNP that there once was. Since 2014 Ms. Sturgeon has, on an annual basis, offered her party faithful another vote sometime next year, just over the hill. Now her members are asking when.

The Supreme Court, as we all knew it would, said the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to call one on its own. So now she says the next General Election will be a ‘de facto’ referendum. Her own party has even more doubts than the general public on that one. She is looking as though she is losing her grip on her own party’s agenda.

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