Nicola Sturgeon is discarded, having served her purpose for the British Establishment once she obtained the UK Supreme Court judgment that Scotland could not hold a referendum on Independence.

That fight was deliberately thrown by Sturgeon’s unionist Lord Advocate. After almost nine years of leading Independence supporters into a whole series of blind alleys, with promise after promise broken to deliver a referendum, and mandate after mandate squandered, she appears to have shattered the Independence movement.

Throughout this nine years, Sturgeon was sustained and promoted by the unionist media.

She pretended she wanted Independence, and they pretended to attack her for it.

Meanwhile Sturgeon was given an extraordinarily easy ride over the real failings of her government. The achievements of Alex Salmond in building an extremely efficient reputation for the SNP’s ability to manage the business of government, were all knocked back.

The collusion of the unionist media in hiding Sturgeon’s role in the attempt to frame Alex Salmond on false charges – a conspiracy orchestrated from her office and her husband’s office – showed the Sturgeon/Unionist axis in operation.

Salmond of course was rightly perceived by the unionists as a much more genuine threat to the union. They had a joint interest with Sturgeon in putting him away.

The main cause of  bad government performance was Sturgeon’s compulsion to sideline all people of real talent in the SNP, and surround herself only with the extremely mediocre, who would never challenge her.

No leader genuinely concerned with the good of the country would ever appoint Shirley-Anne Somerville to be a minister.

Scotland has slid down the international tables, in healthcare, in education, in substance abuse, in almost every important area. The ferries debacle has been a disaster for the island communities.

Much of this has been a result of the SNP gradualists walking into the devolution trap. Devolution forces the government in Holyrood to try to mitigate the effects of Tory policies, with resources constrained by Tory austerity and hands tied by neo-con fiscal policy.

Devolution is a dead end filled with poison gas. Sturgeon’s lack of urgency to escape from it was inexplicable.

Sturgeon’s place in history will be as the woman who saved the Union in its hour of maximum danger – the moment the UK left the European Union, against the will of the large majority of Scottish people expressed in a referendum.

Having saved the Union then, Sturgeon went on to obtain the Supreme Court ruling against a referendum and subsequently shattered the Independence movement over identity politics.

She succeeded, by refusal to listen sympathetically to concerns of others, to unleash a wave of hatred towards trans people from those who had previously given the question not a moment of thought.

The contrast is astonishing between her softly softly attitude to Scotland’s Independence, where doubters were to be gently persuaded over decades, and her drastic attitude to gender reform, where doubters were to be condemned as misogynists and racists.

Sturgeon was a great boon to the unionists. Whether as useful idiot or as traitor is something history will decide. My money is on the latter.

But after the Supreme Court judgement, the UK Establishment did not need her any more. All that soft soap treatment disappeared. They started to seriously question her, on all points.

There has been a huge change in press tone towards Sturgeon since the Supreme Court judgment. The UK establishment believe they no longer need her to hold back the Independence movement.

I suspect much more tellingly, the Establishment has also finally taken off the gloves over the missing £600,000, that was donated to to a “ring-fenced” fund to campaign in the Indyref2 that Sturgeon did not deliver.

The money disappeared into the SNP’s accounts and where it went is not clear.

I could not understand why Sturgeon blatantly lied at the press conference last week, when asked by Tom Gordon of the Herald when she first knew that her husband had lent £107,000 to the SNP.

She replied she could not recall, and sought to distance herself from the loan, saying he used “his resources”.

Now it is a strange marriage where the husband lends £107,000 without telling the wife. But it is not impossible.

However it is impossible that the leader of the SNP was not told that the party was lent £107,000. Whoever it was from, let alone her own husband.

But I could see no reason that Peter Murrell should not lend the party the money. It was not illegal to do so and arguably a good thing to do. Why on earth would Nicola pretend she didn’t know?

This only started to make sense to me yesterday, when I learnt that Murrell made the loan the day after he was interviewed by the police about the missing £600,000.

No wonder she wanted to distance herself from it, and the timing.

Numerous sources have reported in the last few days that Police Scotland have now been given the go ahead by the Crown Office to pursue a criminal case over the missing money.

That seems the most likely explanation for the timing of her resignation today.

The good news is that, if my sources are correct, the £600,000 question is going to make the coronation of the Angus Robertson family collective as devolutionist party leaders somewhat difficult.

So farewell Nicola Sturgeon. You served the Union well. Now they don’t need you any more and you have been tossed away.

They won’t get you that UN job either (all UN posts need to be agreed with the candidate’s member state). The Establishment is both ruthless and ungrateful. I suspect the protection over the Salmond affair will disappear too.

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