Nicola Sturgeon leaves behind a toxic legacy

MoneyWeek mag front cover Nicola Sturgeon

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Nicola Sturgeon has a book out?

Yes. But given the publishers reportedly shelled out a £300,000 advance for a memoir titled Frankly, there are disappointingly few revelations in Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir. And whether you thrill to the words of Scotland’s former first minister or find them risible will be a matter of taste and ideology, for she is a divisive figure. Supporters laud her as straightforward and honest; opponents criticise her as arrogant, condescending and implacably hostile to all those whose views she doesn’t share. Former SNP MP Joanna Cherry, for example, a barrister who fiercely opposed Sturgeon’s gender reforms, is brutal when it comes to documenting her ex-leader’s failings on domestic policy – including health, education, poverty and transport – and, of course, the failure to secure independence. “She repeatedly promised a second referendum she knew she could not deliver, issuing a never-ending list of dates and targets which she missed,” says Cherry in the Scottish Daily Mail. “She marched her troops up and down the hill until many of them deserted in disgust.”

Is that fair?

In part, yes. Sturgeon won eight successive elections as SNP leader, but left her party in a chaotic mess – watching it sink to defeat in 2024 (losing all but nine of their Westminster seats). Yet if all political careers end in failure, 99% of politicians would surely envy Sturgeon’s. She served as first minister for more than eight years, from November 2014 to March 2023, and took the SNP to new electoral heights. In May 2015, the party won 50% of the Scottish vote in the UK general election (its vote share surging by 30 percentage points) and won 56 of the 59 seats. At Holyrood, the SNP was never in danger of losing power under Sturgeon, and even now – after Labour’s win in the 2024 UK election – the SNP is ahead in opinion polls for the 2026 Holyrood election. Under Sturgeon, party membership surged, the SNP entrenched itself as the dominant party of government in Scotland, and support for independence held steady at around the 45%-50% mark – briefly touching 53% in 2020. That’s no small achievement and something no other leader has done.

What did Nicola Sturgeon achieve in office?

Under Sturgeon, the SNP government moved to the left, using newly devolved powers to make income tax more progressive (and higher than in England) and social security more generous, even as GDP grew broadly in line with the rest of the UK. But while Scotland’s debt balloons and spending on public services such as health and education is around 25% higher per capita than in England, “outcomes are not 25% better”, says Alex Massie in The Times. Sometimes they are significantly worse. “Drugs kill more people, per capita, in Scotland than anywhere else in Europe,” and while the causes are complex, the scale of the problem doubled on Sturgeon’s watch. The latest figures on the public finance, too, “paint a pretty bleak picture”, says Lucy Dunn in The Spectator. Scotland has a £26.5 billion gap in the public finances – a black hole that amounts to 11.7% of GDP and which widens to more than £30 billion if North Sea oil revenues are excluded.

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What about education?

It’s a similar story. Shortly after becoming first minister, Sturgeon vowed to “close the attainment gap completely” between children from well-off and poor backgrounds, and asked to be judged on this measure. But a decade later, that gap has widened – and is still growing year by year, while Scotland has fallen decisively behind England and other comparable nations on key metrics. Even admirers of Sturgeon have always wrestled with “the space between rhetoric and reality in the SNP government”, says Libby Brooks in The Guardian. Sturgeon says the introduction of the Scottish child payment, the expansion of free childcare and support for youngsters in care are among her proudest achievements. In practice, though, there’s been a significant implementation gap – extended childcare ended up as a postcode lottery, with extra hours offered at work-unfriendly times. But it is of a piece with contemporary politics that “good intentions are expected to substitute for good outcomes”, says Massie. “In that respect, Sturgeon was an archetype of a particular type of political success. And no one ever lost money betting against the Scottish left’s capacity for moral preening. Sturgeon was, and remains, a master of this craft.”

What about Covid?

The pandemic is seen by some as Sturgeon’s finest hour. In practice, though, Sturgeon’s policies differed from England’s mainly in details of timing and tone. Overall, Scotland’s record on deaths and economic damage are similar – and worse than many European peers. The public inquiry into the pandemic blotted her reputation, with the revelation that many crucial WhatsApp messages were deleted. Sturgeon blames the pandemic for the poor performance of the Scottish health system, but it was under serious strain even before 2020. Under the SNP (in power since 2007) Scotland has lower – and falling – life expectancy, and higher deaths from drug misuse, than England and other European peers.

Not much of a legacy, then?

The SNP has already backed away from much of her policy legacy, says Iain Macwhirter in The Spectator. The gender nonsense has been abandoned.

Sturgeon’s coalition with the Scottish Greens is long gone. And the Scottish government has ditched the ambitious emissions reduction targets she established. Only this week, it scrapped her plans to replace a million gas boilers by 2030. For the SNP to have a chance of securing its goal of independence, it must first understand that Sturgeon’s “policies, especially on gender and the environment, led to a breach with many mainstream Scottish voters”. Yes, 46% percent of voters still back independence. But the prospect of it actually happening is as far away as ever.

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