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Nicola Sturgeon to quit – politicalbetting.com

The SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to resign at a press conference which is scheduled for 11 this morning.
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Fandabidozi...
Who gets the gig then?
Might go for a wee dram of the single malt this evening 🥃
Billionaire Jahm Najafi set to launch $3.75bn takeover bid for Tottenham Hotspur
https://www.ft.com/content/c3795725-eb77-4681-848d-20c37c990386
A lot depends on who will win through to replace her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZuMSXalq78
Ipsos net satisfaction, 20 months before elections in May 1997 and possibly Oct 2024: big difference is rating for opposition leader
End of era, but have no idea what comes next and who it favors.
On a human level you’ve got to feel some sympathy - it’s a gruelling job and when she eschewed point scoring over Westminster during COVID she did well, better than her peers. I suspect like all politicians in power for a long time with no internal opponents worth the name she just stopped listening. Hence the daft (Green inspired) GRR and half baked Deposit scheme.
Two winners today.
Keir Starmer and the United Kingdom.
But, if the coming leadership campaign highlights big differences inside the SNP and the leadership election is messy, there is the potential for it to break apart. So its definitely more likely with her going than it was with her staying.
Watch the Police Scotland inquiry into possible fraud involving a loan by her husband and some allegedly missing SNP money. Will Mr Murrell remain the SNP's CEO?
Kate Forbes is due to come back from maternity leave shortly. Interesting timing.
Ms Sturgeon said that she was "nowhere near" ready to quit as First Minister.
https://twitter.com/LewisMcKenzie94/status/1625809353574957057
What if disgruntled Corbyn supporters decide to set up a new party . Or if Corbyn does . Of course they would do that in the knowledge that they would likely facilitate another Tory government .
The SNP had two remarkable leaders in a row and between them they almost managed to break up the United Kingdom. I can’t see any similarly charismatic figure able to get near that achievement for a while
They probably need a spell in opposition and a batch of new ideas: as well as a new leader. Aim for a new Indy vote in the 2030s
Drugs one pretty stark, but again needs other comparisons (has there been displacement from alcohol, for example?)
Government/PM done for but current LOTO no where near as popular as LOTO in 1995 so Labour win and form the next government but no landslide this time.
The SNP leader, who has been First Minister since 2014, said she was “putting herself forward for a full term of office” in the post.
That would see her serving almost 12 years at the head of the Scottish Government – longer than the 11 years Margaret Thatcher spent in Downing Street as Tory prime minister.
https://archive.ph/1hNSA
Jezbollah looking for a new party and the SNP looking for a new leader. On the same morning. GET IT DONE.
But that’s not a today problem for Starmer, and without Corbyn he improves his chances of a proper majority I guess, because he can bat away any “you stood with Corbyn” stuff with “I sacked him”.
EDIT: Corbyn is Labour Until I Die. If he left the party, it would destroy a big part of his story. I don't see that happening.
Angus Robertson would seem to be the anointed successor, but I’ve got a couple of small bets on Keith Brown, and Ash Regan as an outsider if the party faithful repudiate the GRR legacy entirely.
Edit: could the Salmond trial claim a final victim?
Also, wither the Scottish Green Party in all of this?
Anyway should benefit Labour. Anas Sarwar has more name recognition than any of Nicola Sturgeon's potential successors.
She lost more MPs (net) at the 2017 GE than Theresa May did despite having nearly 270 fewer MPs.
Mind you I have just had to google who Brown is...
Lets say Labour only has a majority if 5-10 seats after the next election. Suddenly the votes of Corbyn supporters will become important on many "knife edge" votes...
So what changed? I think the GRA has been bitter, but Surgeon seemed to be facing it down a bit. So is it the luke-warm support for making the next GE a "de facto referendum" on indy? Again, she is quite capable of toughing things out. Is it worries about the campaign finance allegations against her husband? Not stopped her up until now. Is she afraid that the slight fall off in Nat support in the polls becomes a sustained decline?
The Nats have been on the back foot for a while, and the sense of invulnerability they used to have has clearly been punctured. May be quitting while ahead might give her greater influence with a weaker successor than if the setback came on her watch and she had to take the blame.
In any event it opens up an opportunity for Labour (and actually the Lib Dems too). There are a couple of local by elections coming up, lets see if they give any sense of direction.
https://twitter.com/murdo_fraser/status/1625803117953486849?s=46&t=qvGlHEE2pJTTGoam53Fz_g
Murdo did a funny.
Hopefully Macbeth as per does not get it
Hopefully the weirdo useless Greens are binned
Ben Macpherson?
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1625815207485267968
She is still high on her own supply
Maybe 15 to 20 seats.
You can point to things such as the Scottish Nationalist Ferries being built in Poland, and any number of other wheels that have come off, but that I think is peripheral by comparison.
Why now? Does this have something to do with how many members have left the SNP over the current leadership weaponising Gender Rights, plus whatever the latest dithering is on Indyref2?
I think we are in the political party reporting season, so any fall in membership will come out in public. Daily Record (not SNP supporters) reported last weekend up to 30k lost members, which would put current membership at 35-40% down on 2019.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/snp-crisis-30000-people-cancel-29193882
I think two larger issues are whether the Unionist parties can get their shit together enough to deal with a weakened SNP, ditto for Alba, and the Scottish Parliamentary system needing a major service. That last might be one for Starmer, given that he is a bit of a colourless technocrat.
The puns and single entendres I could make with that surname.
..
Interesting that the clown who was a close acolyte and claimed Russia had hacked him recently , only for Craig Murray to say he had seen them all and it was not Russia and stated he would print as many as he could once he had legal clearance to avoid them jailing him again. One wonders given the amount of e-mails and whatsapps they have kept hidden / lost , had embargoed etc if finally they were stuffed by that. Perhaps just co-incidence.
I think she's done the SNP a favour with the timing - but it remains to be seen what use the party will put it to.
"As #ResignSturgeon trends across social media, it has become clear that Nicola Sturgeon and her government are utterly incapable of working for the best interests of the Scottish people and Scotland.
Day after day, we hear of more lurid scandals emerging from Holyrood.
Be it literally ruining the futures of our children in the SQA results scandal, slandering Douglas Ross and claiming he is a ‘racist’, lying over secret meetings with Alex Salmond, the Coronavirus care homes scandal, the cover-up over the Coronavirus outbreak at Nike, the drug death scandal, the Hate Crime bill, the Derek MacKay scandal or the complete silence on racist nationalists at the border calling for England to ‘get out of Scotland’.
In the interest of all Scots, it’s time for Nicola Sturgeon to do the right thing - resign, and allow a cross-party government of unity take over to see Scotland through this dark time - created after 13 years of SNP misrule."
Lock her up.
Self-serving short-sighted mince