Farewell Alex Salmond, hello Nicola Sturgeon

And so the Age of Nicola dawns. Elected First Minister by the Scottish Parliament yesterday; sworn in this morning. Taking First Minister’s Questions this afternoon. Alex Salmond’s departure was a long drawn-out affair but it will not take Nicola Sturgeon anything like as long to leave her own distinct impression on Scottish politics.

I am not sure why folk at Westminster thought the referendum defeat would plunge the SNP into crisis. That might have been the case if the result had been 65-35 but that, despite what some thought, was never, ever, a likely outcome. Senior SNP strategists knew winning might be difficult but they also reckoned that anything above 40 percent support for independence would be enough to change the dynamics of Scottish – and British – politics for good. Forty percent was their firewall and they knew that, absent calamity, they would get that.

So it has proved. Conventional wisdom assures us that Nicola will move the SNP towards the left.