NICOLA Sturgeon’s decision to resign as First Minister marks the end of a political story for Scotland that started with the 2007 parliamentary election.

Having taken a brief period of respite for nearly 300 years, the re-established Scottish Parliament was ready by its third election to deviate from Westminster’s set menu of political parties.

The country had rejected the two barking dogs of Westminster to back a third option – a formerly fringe nationalist party, led by Alex Salmond. Sixteen years ago, Scotland chose to hand the reins of its still fledgling Parliament to an outsider party – and the country was forever changed.

It seems a trite observation, to point to any political event and confidently declare the obvious: that “things changed when they changed”. But compare the past decade-and-a-half of politics in Scotland to our Parliament’s counterpart in the City of Westminster, and the impact of that moment becomes clear. Westminster has come to be defined by a political process that involves meekly passing power back and forth between two political behemoths and watching as they drag themselves through endless failures and scandals until, inevitably, the public gets tired enough to give the other one a go again. It’s a hopeless affair.

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For all their faults, the SNP at least seemed to be going somewhere, to have political aspirations beyond just holding on to power until resignedly handing it back. Maybe that’s why the SNP’s grip on Scottish politics and Holyrood has been what it is.

And following Salmond came Sturgeon, a future leader ready for the role. She has led the country for eight years through significant challenges, failures and victories – and will be remembered as a respected and competent leader who led Scotland at a time when the Conservative government floundered from one fool to another.

There is no clear successor, no-one with a profile that even comes close. The Parliament’s future is uncertain, now, for the first time since that historic win.

Brian Cox thinks the next party leader should be Angus Robertson. The right-wing press seem enamoured with Kate Forbes.

Every SNP member and their nan probably has someone in mind, though so far the only confirmed candidates as of yesterday were Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan.

With knives sharpened and handshakes at the ready, the race to find the next first minister has begun in earnest – though I doubt the campaign could ever reach the heights of when a former SNP councillor, now the general Secretary of the Alba party, shared campaign literature in which he had Photoshopped his face on to the body of a colleague, even though standing for an election in which he wasn’t even a candidate. No, I expect this election to be a far less humorous affair.

The lack of an obvious successor is a crack that, for the past few years, has been threatening to become a pothole the likes of which would rival even the city of Glasgow’s roads. And like the city’s approach to fixing said potholes, it’s unclear how long a replacement will last in the political climate they are set to inherit.

Sturgeon’s record would suggest there was no political storm that could not be weathered by her abilities – but a new leader will be taking hold of a party whose failings on education and healthcare cannot be ignored, and who will have a firm target on their back from the little soldiers of the British culture wars.

Already, the vultures of Westminster are ruffling their feathers in glee at the prospect of securing some of the voters who will potentially drift away from the SNP in light of these changes, ready to celebrate another weary gain from the actions of their opposition, over actually having done anything to earn it – though Labour might want to press pause on the Prosecco given the lack of profile boasted by its own leadership.

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I suspect that what set Sturgeon apart from other political leaders in the UK in the eyes of the public was that, for all intents and purposes, she set her own agenda, in contrast to the weathercocks of her opposition.

And while we can attack and criticise the positions themselves, they seemed sincerely held at a time when most UK politicians treated policy as malleable as Boris Johnson’s explanations on which parties he attended during lockdown and why.

With the press already defining candidates by their stances on transient culture war topics, it feels regrettably inevitable that this internal election will be fought over which side of the divide the party should fall.

The SNP have come too close to backing deeply regressive policies in the past to not warrant concern over which path they will choose.