As Sturgeon acknowledged in her resignation speech, Scotland is a changed place from when she took on the job after the 2014 referendum. Since then, Sturgeon has been the architect of a carefully crafted new Scottish political consensus. This uncodified accord convenes civic society, the corporate lobby and the political class. It’s more than triangulation. Unlike Scotland’s international reputation as a progressive beacon in Tory Britain suggests, the Scottish government sits at the core of a cosy neo-liberal harmony.

Sturgeon’s efforts have been successful. Scottish politics has been sent to sleep because, when special interests are catered for, there is little left to do. This post-2014 status quo depends upon the symbiotic relationship of ‘progressive’ presentation and, at best, managerial class-neutral politics. The result of this is a Scottish Government happy to intervene on behalf of the individual – take the ‘Baby Box’, for example – but far less inclined to serve the collective. More than one in four Scottish children grow up in poverty, in spite of their Baby Box, a package of useful baby products now sent to every newborn in Scotland.

To assess Sturgeon’s legacy and the impact of her resignation, the lasting strength of the consensus she built must be interrogated, as must the state of her party and the movement for Scottish self-determination which propelled her to power.

The final few months of Sturgeon’s tenure have seen accelerated attempts to asset-strip Scotland. In January, the Scottish government heralded the arrival of two ‘Green Freeports’. These ‘free enterprise zones’ will effectively operate outside of national borders and escape democratic accountability. They provide low-tax, deregulated playgrounds for private capital, offering multinational corporations an opportunity to slash workers’ wages, terms and conditions.

However, for those who followed last year’s ScotWind auction, the advent of freeports won’t come as a surprise. In 2022, Sturgeon’s government sold Scotland’s offshore wind capacity to the planet’s largest fossil fuel corporations. Having abandoned their commitment to establish a national energy company, the government opted not to kickstart a just transition, but to empower the likes of Shell and BP. Since the auction, 71% of Scotwind’s manufacturing spending has left Scotland, the promise of jobs has disappeared and proceeding offshore auctions have raised up to 40 times what Scotwind did. This fire sale seems only to have handed multinational capitalism another slice of the Scottish economy.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Transport Matters