The Scottish Prime Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) will present her resignation as head of the Scottish government this Wednesday, guarantees the British press.
The announcement is scheduled for 11 am local time (the same time in mainland Portugal), at a press conference in Edinburgh.
The news about this decision by Sturgeon – one of the most electorally successful political leaders in the history of Scotland – took many people by surprise.
Although his plan to call an independence referendum has suffered some setbacks in recent months, the first minister Scotland had assured that it intended to run in next year’s national parliamentary elections under the banner of independence.
Sturgeon took over as Scotland’s prime minister at the end of 2014, succeeding Alex Salmond, with whom she was at odds.
He inherited a government and an independence party, two months after the majority of Scots (55%) rejected secession from the United Kingdom in a referendum. The ruling Conservative Party in London treated the matter as settled “for at least a generation”.
The British exit process from the European Union, however, gave new impetus to the Scottish independence cause, which Sturgeon led.
Signaling the “change in circumstances” brought about by the result of the “Brexit” referendum, in favor of leaving throughout the territory, but rejected by the majority of the Scottish population (62%), the Prime Minister demanded a new referendum and the SNP was the most voted party in all the elections he ran for (national, regional and local), campaigning with that promise.
The intransigence of governments tories Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak led Sturgeon to take the case to court, but in November last year, he suffered a severe blow when the British Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish parliament had neither competence nor autonomy legislation to call a referendum on independence and which, in this sense, needed the authorization of the national Parliament, in London.