LONDON — Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish government and a powerful figure in the drive for Scottish independence, said on Wednesday that she would step down after more than eight years in the role.
The reasons for Ms. Sturgeon’s decision were not immediately clear, though she had recently been embroiled in a dispute over the Scottish government’s policy of gender self-declaration, which had erupted after a convicted rapist, Isla Bryson, was incarcerated in a women’s prison.
Ms. Sturgeon’s party, the Scottish National Party, remains the dominant political force in Scotland, though her departure comes at a particularly fraught time for the party, with the dispute over the gender policy and debate within the party about plans for a second referendum on Scottish independence. The push for independence is a founding goal of the party, and Ms. Sturgeon has been at the forefront of the continued efforts for Scotland to liberate itself from the United Kingdom.
Ms. Sturgeon is Scotland’s longest-serving first minister and took over from her predecessor in 2014 on the heels of Scottish voters rejecting independence from the rest of the United Kingdom in a referendum.
Last month, Ms. Sturgeon said in an interview with BBC that she had “plenty in the tank” to continue leading Scotland and was “nowhere near ready” to step down from the role.
Ms. Sturgeon, who joined the pro-independence Scottish National Party when she was 16 years old, has spent her time in office vying for Scotland to secure as much additional power over its own affairs as possible. Last year, she announced new plans for another Scottish independence referendum that would take place in October 2023, reopening the question of whether Scotland would secede from Britain in what would be the second vote on Scottish independence in a decade.
