After the resignation of the Scottish Prime Minister, uncertainty reigns among the separatists

He Scottish National Party (SNP) began a long and uncertain process on Thursday to appoint its new leader, following the prime minister’s surprise resignation Nicholas Sturgeonwhich raises questions about the future of the independence movement in Scotland.

The SNP were due to meet on Thursday afternoon to set a timetable for choosing a successor to match the charismatic and skilful 52-year-old politician who revived the group years ago when he was in one of his worst times and shocked him on Wednesday when announcing his unexpected resignation alleging wear and tear for so many years in power.

Sturgeon was his predecessor’s right-hand man, Alex Salmondsince 2004 and when he resigned in 2014, after the self-determination referendum in which 55% of Scots chose to stay in the UK, she was crowned indisputably as her natural successor.

However, there is no longer an obvious candidate: all eyes seem to be on the Minister for Culture and Foreign Affairs of the Scottish Regional Government. Angus Robertsonthe deputy prime minister John Swinneyyoung finance minister Kate Forbes or health officer Humza Yousaf.

But the process can be long and complex. The last time it was held, in 2004, it lasted almost three months.

“It will be a shock to the Scottish political system. It changes everything,” he told the news agency. AFP Christopher Carman, political scientist at the University of Glasgow.

In the opinion of polling expert John Curtice, “the SNP needs more than just a capable Prime Minister. He needs a good politician on the campaign trail who can push the independence debate forward.” And it’s a “big unknown” whether he will find it, he said Times Radio.

“Under Sturgeon, support for independence did not increase as much as he had expected. He was unable to answer some of the trickier questions: pensions, membership of the European Union, currencya whole host of issues that can affect the public finances of an independent Scotland,” he said. AFP James Mitchell of the University of Edinburgh.

The main argument against independence in the 2014 referendum was that it would exclude Scotland from the European Union.

However, two years after the referendum on the Brexit – opposed by a large majority of Scots – paradoxically dragged this nation of 5.5 million people out of the EU with the rest of the country precisely because it belongs to the United Kingdom.

Despite the central government in London insisting that the 2014 consultation was “once in a generation”, Sturgeon defended that Brexit was a game-changer and he has skillfully and patiently defended the right to call another “legal” referendum in the years to come.

Faced with the persistent refusal of the central executive, he ended up going to court.

And when last year a Supreme Court judgment closed the door to organizing a consultation without London’s agreement, he assured that he would transform the next legislative elections – scheduled for January 2025 at the latest. – in one plebiscite on independence.

This prospect, however, was highly controversial among voters and within the ranks of the SNP itself, which was due to hold a conference on the issue in March.

Some separatist leaders are now calling for its postponement, so as not to impose a decision on the new leader, while polls show that support for independence is stalling.

The SNP must “take a break” from the independence struggle to “give our new leader the opportunity and space to present his vision”, he said. BBC the leader of the party in the London Parliament, Stephen Flynn.

But Sturgeon’s resignation not only weakened the case for independence, but bolstered the electoral hopes of his rival parties in Scotland.

According to the British newspaper The temperatureMembers of the Labor Party and the Conservative Party reacted with “jubilation” on Wednesday to the departure of the figurehead of Scottish politics since he took office more than eight years ago.

(With information from AFP)

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