12 March 2025, 13:28

By Gina Davidson

The inevitable has finally happened: Nicola Sturgeon has announced she will not stand for re-election to the Scottish Parliament at next year’s elections.

The deadline for selection as an SNP candidate was fast approaching - and despite putting her hat in the ring to be vetted as a potential candidate, which prompted surprised speculation she would want to remain on the political merry-go-round, she has now decided the ride has to come to an end.

Despite being close friends, it’s probably the best political news John Swinney has had in a long time.

Her departure from Holyrood will mean he can draw a line under the tumultuous events that have swamped his party in the last two years - and it will mean no tricky questions about the candidate for Glasgow Southside.

An MSP since 1999 and the creation of the Scottish Parliament, Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to quit frontline politics brings to an end a controversial political career.

From the heady heights of becoming First Minister in 2014, to the lows of being arrested and questioned - though never charged - as part of Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform investigation into SNP finances, it has been a rollercoaster for the woman who joined the SNP in 1986 as a shy, bookish girl, who fiercely believed in Scottish independence as an antidote to Thatcherism.

It was the........

© LBC