Nicola Sturgeon announces she is to step down as SNP leader
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Donald Trump tonight reacted with joy to Nicola Sturgeon quitting as Scottish First Minister. The ex-US President hit out at the SNP leader’s controversial gender reforms, which have sparked a major row in recent months.
Mr Trump also claimed Ms Sturgeon “fought me all the way” over his golf courses in Scotland.
And he insisted Scots would be “much better off” without Ms Sturgeon in the top job.
In a statement, Mr Trump said: “Good riddance to failed woke extremist Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland!
“This crazed leftist symbolises everything wrong with identity politics.
“Sturgeon thought it was OK to put a biological man in a women’s prison, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Sturgeon fought for a ‘Gender Recognition Reform Bill’ that would have allowed 16-year-old children to change their gender without medical advice.
“I built the greatest golf properties in the world in Scotland, but she fought me all the way, making my job much more difficult.
“The wonderful people of Scotland are much better off without Sturgeon in office!”
It comes after Ms Sturgeon announced her shock resignation after eight years in office in a hastily-organised press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh this morning.
The SNP leader said “the time is now” and denied she was reacting to “short-term pressures” after a series of political setbacks.
She said: “In my head and in my heart I know that time is now. That it’s right for me, for my party and my country.”
Ms Sturgeon acknowledged the “physical and mental impact” of the top job.
She said: “If the question is: can I battle on for another few months? Then the answer is yes, of course I can.
“Since my very first moments in the job I have believed a part of serving well would be to know almost instinctively when the time is right to make way for someone else.
“But if the question is: can I give this job everything it demands and deserves for another year, let alone for the remainder of this parliamentary term, give it every ounce of energy that it needs in the way that I have strived to do every day for the last eight years? The answer honestly is different.”
The Scottish First Minister has suffered a series of political challenges in recent months as her Government sought to push through gender reforms, only for them to be blocked by Westminster.
She insisted the row surrounding a transgender double rapist being sent to a women’s jail “wasn’t the final straw”, but said it is “time for someone else” to lead the party.
Ms Sturgeon admitted the “choppy waters” but insisted her resignation was not in response to the “latest period of pressure”.
She said: “This decision comes from a deeper and longer-term assessment.”
The SNP leader, who rose to power after Scots rejected independence in 2014, has also failed to realise her obsession with breaking away from the UK.
In a bitter blow, the Supreme Court last year ruled that Holyrood could not lawfully hold a second ballot.
Ms Sturgeon had planned to fight the next general election as a de facto referendum on Scottish independence, but her exit now raises questions about the immediate future of the cause itself.
But she vowed to continue in politics and insisted her life-long cause of independence is “being won”.
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