“... the steadiness and sombre dignity of the first ministers of the devolved parliaments – notably Nicola Sturgeon – and then turn to the slapdash boosterism of Johnson and his associates, many of whom seem to have caught his feckless tone as well as his frightful virus. It is jarring to hear ministers claim that they are ‘proud of our ...”

“... in 2021, however, things do seem to have shifted further left. Humza Yousaf, who replaced Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and first minister in March, has so far consolidated this position, hiking taxes on second homes, talking up further taxation on the rich and pledging not to implement the UK government’s new restrictions on public sector ...”

“... vote. But Umar Ali, an IT worker who had supported the SNP, was minded to switch to Labour. ‘Nicola was very good, but it’s different now,’ he said. ‘My parents’ generation stopped voting Labour over the Iraq War. But these things have their cycles.’One of the 56 SNP MPs elected in the 2015 general election, when the narrowish failure of the ...”

“... became the most bitter controversy of Piłsudski’s early career, and it’s far from dead today. Nicola Sturgeon, for instance, repeats the argument that Scottish independence is instrumental: not an end in itself, but the indispensable means to achieve a just society. Her radical critics are Piłsudskian: independence is their final goal, while ...”

“... justice systems are enmeshed; it is impossible to write about one without the other. In 2017, Nicola Sturgeon, who liked to style herself ‘chief mammy’, commissioned an Independent Care Review which found that, although the principles behind the Children’s Hearings System were sound, some of the structures were outdated and the relationship ...”

“... that … is no more – and yet … still lives in the hearts of each and every one of us’, as Nicola Sturgeon wrote in her preface for a new edition in 2020. This fandom foregrounds the novel’s minor-Impressionist-on-a-paperback-classics-cover evocation of adolescence, with any troubling details pushed to the side. ...”

“... grinds and screeches as it does so: the old machine just isn’t made for that. And this is why Nicola Sturgeon’s requests to admit the Scottish government as an equal partner in Brexit negotiations, or to share Home Office control of immigration, make May so cross. The fact that the British constitution is invisible often makes it ...”

“... the Sewel Convention states that devolved legislatures must give their consent to the repeal, and Nicola Sturgeon has made clear this will not be forthcoming. If the government went ahead nonetheless, it would clearly be acting unconstitutionally, possibly provoking a constitutional crisis – and this before we even consider the prospect of another ...”

“... spoke of the ‘future potential for reindustrialising the Kintyre peninsula’. When, in 2013, Nicola Sturgeon, still Salmond’s deputy, visited the new quay the council had built for renewables, she said there was ‘a real buzz about Campbeltown’. But SSE couldn’t make a go of it either. Three years later, it wanted out, and CS Wind came ...”