The Scottish National Party (SNP) will announce this Monday the winner of the internal elections to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, the current leader and Prime Minister of Scotland, who resigned in mid-February.
The announcement will be made shortly after the polls close, at 12:00 a.m., and shortly after, Nicola Sturgeon will formally step down as Prime Minister alongside King Charles III.
In the race are Scotland’s Chancellor of Finance Kate Forbes, 32, Health Minister Humza Yousaf, 37, and Ash Regan MP, 49.
Sturgeon, 52, has unexpectedly announced his resignation after eight years as party leader and head of Scotland’s home government, citing the “physical and mental shock” he has suffered in recent years.
The campaign opened divisions within the party over political strategy and the legacy of Sturgeon, hitherto popular within the SNP and with most Scots.
The SNP currently holds 64 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and governs in coalition with the much smaller Greens. It is also the third most voted party at the national level, with 45 deputies.
However, it has been losing members, whose numbers dropped from more than 100,000 to around 70,000 last year.
The party’s chief executive, Peter Murrell, and Sturgeon’s husband also resigned.
Candidate Ash Regan applauded Peter Murrell’s move, saying it was “unacceptable to have the party leader’s husband as chief executive”, while Kate Forbes also admitted that “decisions within the SNP were made by very few people”. .
Both have also used the televised debates to attack Humza Yousaf, a Sturgeon ally seen as the continuationist candidate.
The candidates have disagreed on issues such as the gender change policy in Scotland, whose legislation has been vetoed by the British government, and which Regan and Forbes criticize, but Yousaf defends.
However, Forbes, who belongs to the Free Church of Scotland (evangelical), has been criticized for assuming that faith would have prevented her from voting to legalize same-sex marriage, which she did in 2014, before she was chosen.
The election of the leadership caused the levels of support for the SNP and the referendum on Scottish independence, which the party has as its main ambition, to fall in the polls.
Scottish voters voted to stay in the UK in a 2014 referendum, but the SNP wants a new vote because they disagree with Brexit.
Britain’s central government has refused to authorize a second referendum and the UK High Court has ruled that Scotland cannot hold public consultation without London’s consent.
Source: TSF
