If you wondered whether or not Nicola Sturgeon was really that big a deal, your questions have been answered this week. The circus surrounding the publication of her memoirs has extended well beyond Scotland; Ms Sturgeon has been one of the biggest stories of the week throughout the UK.

This is all perfectly justified from a news perspective. I have been around the Scottish Parliament for almost all of its quarter century, and it seems perfectly clear to me that Ms Sturgeon is the most consequential and noteworthy politician of the era.

There are obvious reasons for that. Her electoral success as First Minister is unimpeachable (save for a slight setback in the 2017 general election). Her UK-wide popularity, which started with her role in the Brexit referendum and peaked during the Covid pandemic, was surely higher than any of us imagined a Scottish nationalist leader’s could be. The breakdown in her relationship with Alex Salmond and the circumstances surrounding it constitutes a political soap opera more salacious than anything the UK has seen in my lifetime.

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Her own arrest and that of her husband, the latter of whose case is ongoing, was jaw-dropping. And, of course there was gender recognition legislation, hammered through the Parliament at a time where dissent was a rarity, and perhaps the clearest indicator that Ms Sturgeon’s hitherto ultra-sensitive public radar had diminished.

It would be easy to identify any of these areas and claim it as Ms Sturgeon’s legacy, and I am certain that her supporters and........

© Herald Scotland