I did not see that coming.

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Idgi is "first minister" not prime minister or what? Is it a big deal? I'm American btw go easy on me lol.

Shocked. Nicola Sturgeon is hugely popular in Scotland, and would have won another election easily in my opinion.

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She holds the position of leader of the Scottish National Party, which makes her the first minister of the Scottish government, which is a devolved government from the UK government.

The devolved government's allow Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland autonomy over certain areas of policy, whilst certain aspects are reserved for the UK government (such as defence).

She is (currently) scotland's leader, but the position of first minister is not quite equivalent to the UKs prime minister as it's for the governing of just Scotland whereas the prime minister is elected by the whole UK.

She is first minister because Scotland isn't a full sovereign country, it's local matters are "devolved" from the national government in Westminster. She is (was?) the highest seat in the devolved government though.

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Not surprised really, politics is not a very emotionally stable career path.

I think more and more politicians and peoples who would be politicians are switching off from the idea, the rewards just don't sound worth it anymore.

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Achthe wee jimmy krankies goan.

This is 100% because of the trans thing

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Can you elaborate? What part, the law being passed in Scotland or it being blocked by England?

Then I'm going to declare myself First Cat Minister of Scotland. Never been there in my life but I've always wanted to. And I'm good at cats :)

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what thing is that?

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... That's federalism.

Well, OK. It's federalism with extra steps. But if I described what a state in America was, and then I described what a country in the UK was, an impartial observer would be inclined to say they are roughly equivalent.

*Scottish National Party

Scottish Nationalist Party is used mainly by Conservatives in order to make them seem akin to blood and soil nationalism, ala Nazis.

Oops, i was typing while watching her speech!

At a guess, the blocking.

This is sad, the departure of the last internationally respected British politician.

Well the words state and country are subjective and are used interchangeably in different context so yes basically federalism

The gender recognition reform bill, allowed 16 year olds to legally change their gender after a much shorter period of time living as their preferred gender, also just made it easier for anyone to change their gender legally. Then the case of a rapist named Adam graham who changed his gender and was temporarily held in a womens prison caused a lot of anger and Sturgeon had to go back on what she said and place Adam graham in a man’s prison.

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Guessing she got a visit from some nice men from the government who politely asked her to stop opposing the Party.

With the UK supreme court ruling that Scotland cannot hold a unilateral independence referendum and the GRR blocked by Westminster, that was two major defeats for the SNP. Nicola couldn’t really go on past this point. I suspect that her troubles started with last year’s Scottish Parliament election where the SNP didn’t achieve a majority of seats and had to compromise with the Scottish Greens. Her claim that the SNP was speaking for all Scots was questionable from that point.

Except the UK is weird in that it kinda did it backwards compared to other countries. When other countries like the US or Australia federalised, they did it by unifying a bunch of independent states into one country. The UK did it by splitting their existing unified country into states that hadn't existed with any sort of real autonomy for centuries.

It's definitely a form of [edit: resembles superfically] federalism, but not really equivalent to the US. For instance, England is a country in the UK, but it doesn't have a dedicated parliament or first minister. It's run directly out of the UK Parliament. Imagine the effect if the federal Congress and Presidency were merged with the state government of Texas as the supreme authority over the US but also Texas specifically.

You could still say they're roughly equivalent, but roughly is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Not sure that makes sense to me. She leads a party that believes Scotland should be independent and suffers from interference and disdain from London.

And then London interferes and treats Scotland with disdain? Shouldn't that actually strengthen her position?

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Really? It's been hours and not a single "seems fishy" joke? Reddit is really growing up.

Except that changing your gender on your documents doesn't determine what prison you get placed in. It's always a case by case basis.

Well her goal for many years was to bring Scotland to a new referendum. The strategy was to negotiate and obtain one from the UK government, but when it became obvious they wouldn’t agree plan B was the legal route and make a case that Scotland was constitutionally allowed to have an unilateral referendum on its future and that didn’t work either. Ultimately her credibility took a hit in both cases. It’s not about her being right, what’s questioned is her ability to deliver.

So England is the equivalent of Washington DC in that case.

It 100% isn’t.

She addressed this in her announcement press conference. You expect setbacks in politics, it comes with the job.

She’s been First Minister for eight years - longer than anyone before. She was deputy FM for 8 years before that. She led the country through Covid.

Her energy for the job is just gone. It’s understandable.

err erm hmmm

her political career has taken a bit of a battering.

that's the best i got.

Kinda, except it's also 85 percent of the population and instead of having less representation than the states, it has more.

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It's not federalism. Federalism builds it's power from the constituent states/provinces etc that grant power to the central government. The US is federalist as it's a collection of states, and power ultimatly comes from the various states. It's a bottom-up distribution of power.

The UK is a devolved unitary state. All power ultimately lies in the central government in Westminster, and some powers are granted to devolved government's for specific regions. It's a top-down distribution of power.

The easy way to see the difference is that the UK government could 100% legally dissolve the Scottish Parliament tomorrow and directly govern Scotland, they'd manage the impossible and become even less popular - but they could do it; because they are the ultimate source of authority. The US federal government could not dissolve Texas, because it does not have the authority to do so.

It's worth noting that a federalist country still recognises the federal government as supreme over the state governments, but that federal government is limited by the powers granted to it. Whereas a unitary country has no limit, it has ultimate authority in the country (to be kept in check by the judiciary ofc) to do what it wants.

So it’s sort of like a premier of a province in Canada or an Australian state? With differing levels of scope of government I assume

Thank you so much for explaining the system to us!

Yea she was the only leader the UK had that was competent what do we do now?

No it isn't.

I guess the only argument left is the right to self-determination under international law, and the "let's see you stop us" school of thought.

If they want independence badly enough, they're gonna have to just leave and let the cards fall where they may.

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> It's definitely a form of federalism

No it's not. As one Conservative Politician said decades ago "Power devolved is power retained" (by the central government). That has been proved recently with EU powers that should have been automatically returned to Scotland following the Brexit shit-show were 'grabbed' by Westminster, the ignoring of the mandate the Scots Electorate gave to the SNP & SGreens to hold another Independence Referendum and the outrageous decision for to block Scottish Legislation on Gender Recognition which would bring Scotland into line with another civilised countries.

We were, however, perfidiously promised Federalism (or near to it) during the No Campaign in 2014. Needless to say that was reneged upon.

The political way is not entirely closed. If Scotland can persuade the UK government to allow an independence referendum then we will hold one. Unfortunately Nicola never managed to engage with Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or, to some degree, Rishi Sunak. I hope the next SNP Leader will establish a meaningful dialogue with Westminster.

More like a two state USA where Texas politics rules Connecticut on major issues without the protection of a Written Constitution, equal Senators, the much criticised Electoral College system, or even the prospect of 'Texas' having its powers curtailed by an interventionist Supreme Court (when its not 'packed' by partisan numpties that is). :)

Not entirely sure how it works up in the frozen north (frozen compared to us in Scotland anyway!), but the UK (or Great Britain) is the sovereign body most people would likely relate to and is represented internationally, and then each of the "countries" are individual states with their own laws within that.

To confuse matters, England is governed by the UK government, where Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland have their own local governments, whilst England does not. Some view this as unfair since anything decided at Westminster (which is the highest governing body of England) is impacted by those from parties outside of that country, so the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein get input into England, but England (not Westminster) doesn't get input into them (although they do because England is the largest of the four and heavily influences the Westminster government).

Edit: spelling and punctuation are hard on a train!

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>No it's not. As one Conservative Politician said decades ago "Power devolved is power retained"

Well taken, edited.

So a good policy that had nothing to do with prison placement caused her to back off?

That’s not my understanding at all. She was pissed. As were a lot of Scots more broadly.

And prisoners have always been case by case and unrelated to changed information, though it may be one of the number of factors that goes into that consideration.

> Her energy for the job is just gone

I mean, I think it’s fair to say the UK intervention on their gender recognition bill very well may have played a role in that and/or her recognition that it’s time to move on so someone with more energy can pick up the fight.

I think calling it “100% the trans thing” is wrong, but “100% it isn’t” doesn’t really ring true either. It may be a minor factor, but I do think it hd a very real impact.

This is a red herring.

Sorry, but she was straight-up asked this question and said ‘no’.

The Fashes

Huh, I must’ve missed that tid bit. Thanks!

Basically US equivalent of a governor no?

She literally had one policy, which she failed to achieve. Everything in Scotland that the devolved government has control over is a shitshow.

Are you mad?

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Everything is a shit show in England as well and all the policies the English government is most proud of just took away our rights and freedoms and made us all poorer. And they keep trying to take even more rights and freedoms away when people protest and strike so even if she didn't gain independence she is still far better than a decade of conservative policies.

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None of your rights have been taken away, total hyperbole.

Have a look into the state of the Scottish NHS and education systems, an absolute shambles.

How do you think they pay for free University places? By stripping out the rest of the education budget.

How do you think they pay for free prescriptions? By bleeding the rest of the NHS dry.

All the SNP have done is make populist promises funded by cuts elsewhere, and push for their ultimate agenda of small minded nationalism at any cost.

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The SNP is completely out of its mind if they truly believe any PM of the United Kingdom would allow Scotland to have a second independence referendum.

I do believe that Westminster needs to bring Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to the table when figuring out some of the major issues facing the UK, but I also believe that Scotland doesn’t have a clue how destructive a “yes” vote on independence would be not only for their country, but the world as well.

Well there’s a precedent, David Cameron agreed to a referendum didn’t he, and the arguments against independence are all debatable. Scotland has enough natural resources, agriculture, tourism and technology to build a strong economy, and frankly I don’t see how the emergence of a new independent country would threaten the world. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Scotland has had one of the most consistently underperforming economies in the UK under the SNP.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sturgeon-s-war-on-business-is-strangling-scotland-s-economy/

I don't know what rights you are referring to? Freedoms? Are you sure you aren't getting confused with the SNP's utterly draconian 'hate crime' laws? The SNP are one of the most staunchly anti-free speech parties in the UK. This is the sort of policy I expect in Putin's Russia or Xi's China.

https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2021/11/08/scotlands-new-hate-crime-act-will-have-a-chilling-effect-on-free-speech

Their management of the Scottish education system has been extremely poor, verging on disastrous.

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Sounds kinda fishy to me.

Looks like this turned out to be correct... I wonder if dark money was pumping the Scottish independence movement to further balkanize the UK/EU/West, checks notes, yep...

Putin’s war could be the undoing of Nicola Sturgeon - As Nato fortifies to counter the Russian threat, the case against Trident – and for Scottish independence – is looking increasingly frail.

How Ukraine war influenced the SNP's Nato position

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Rights and freedoms to live and work in any country in the EU, they can now arrest you if you make any noise during a protest and are trying to make it harder to protest they also want to take away our European human rights just so they can send people to Rwanda but we all lose those rights.

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The ECHR is one of the worst organizations in Europe and arguably far worse than the EU itself. I have absolutely zero issue deporting illegal immigrants who have no right to asylum. Everyone knows the asylum system is being abused on a massive scale. If you actually look up the 30 articles of the UN Declaration on Human Rights you may be surprised by its limitations and how little of it is actually adhered to.

Just a piece of advice from someone with property in the UK, US, and Germany. If you have relevant skills you should have no problem getting into and living in an EU member state. The unrestricted movement of people brings with it serious problems. Having a system that allows for people to move to say Germany if they have in-demand skills is still very possible and a much better way to maintain things. Before you hurl the usual responses, I speak German, I've lived there on and off for years, some of my best friends are German, my wife is not from Europe and we all have zero issues with leaving the EU. The only trouble we've had is with Covid restricting travel.

Given the feeble response of policing to protesters illegally blocking roads I don't agree with you. The only thing the British Police seem to do anymore is harass and threaten people guilty of 'thought crimes' on Twitter. Free speech is absolute, there's no half way free speech option and unfortunately the UK is falling down the road to tyranny with the SNP leading the way with their horrendous hate crime bill.

I will be surprised if the EU still exists 10 years from now.

You sound like a qanon conspiracy theorists.