There's a speech at the end of Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus which stands as eulogy for the political careers of so many leaders from the same mould as Nicola Sturgeon.

“Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

and burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough,

that sometime grew within this learned man.

Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall.”

Sturgeon has given her final bow to the audience. She won’t be standing at the next election. One of the most significant Scottish politicians of the last century is leaving the stage.

Faustus, like Sturgeon, was counted among the best of his time, but hubris brought him low. He could have become the greatest of men. Instead, his ignominious fate became a warning to others.

It seems the curse of charismatic communicators from the centre and centre-left to burn bright then collapse under the weight of their rise.

Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were the same. Adored on arrival, they left office cloaked in failure.

It’s still too soon to say anything of the truth or otherwise of the allegations against Sturgeon in Operation Branchform. So we cannot weigh that in the balance. It’s for the law to decide in due course. What we can say is that the combination of Sturgeon as party leader with her husband as chief executive looked rotten from the start.

Read more by Neil Mackay

People lost their balance when it came to Sturgeon. She was either saint or devil. Perhaps the most absurd nonsense spouted about her was that she was an enemy of women. This is culture war rhetoric from the depths of Twitter.

Sturgeon was,........

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