Nicola Sturgeon's legacy is an uncompetitive Scottish economy struggling to afford her socialist policies – John McLellan

I can’t have been alone in being nonplussed about the weekend poll indicating four in ten Scottish voters want First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to resign immediately; it can’t be far off the committed vote for the three main unionist parties, so what’s the big deal?

The Panelbase survey for the Sunday Times was bound to fuel more speculation about her future, and she may well be encouraged that, after eight years of running an administration marked by failures, 45 per cent want her to stay for at least another three years. Perhaps her brand of emotional communication has turned those voters into modern Scottish equivalents of weeping peasants in the Russian Empire who could not imagine life without their Little Father, and the Chief Mammy is their adored Tsarina who cannot be deposed.

In fact, the poll contained compelling evidence that, as far as SNP followers are concerned, life without Ms Sturgeon is indeed unimaginable because nearly well over two-thirds of voters don’t have any idea who should succeed her should she step down. The line of succession was a three-way split between Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, whose maternity leave has allowed her to dodge the gender recognition reform fiasco for now, deputy First Minister John Swinney and Constitutional Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson, but between them they could only muster 18 per cent, with Ms Forbes marginally ahead as the preference of seven per cent, compared to six and five for the two men respectively, while 69 per cent said they didn’t know who should come next.

With the SNP regularly polling in the 40s, that’s a lot of nationalists who can’t express any preference, and given both Mr Swinney and Mr Robertson have been on the SNP front line throughout the years of dominance, such lack of recognition probably rules them out for anything other than caretakers. Ms Sturgeon’s approval rating might have slipped into negative territory for the first time, to minus four last week according to YouGov, compared to plus seven in October, but as more people want her to stay than go, why should she feel under any pressure?

The real hallmark of Nicola Sturgeon's time as First Minister has been wealth redistribution (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA)

Maybe the police investigation into the strange case of the missing £600,000 of independence campaign funds, along with her husband’s coincidental loan of £100,000 to the SNP, will change the atmosphere, but she’s obfuscated her way out of tight corners before and, if anything, that Panelbase survey underlines the pressure to stay.

The question then is less how long Ms Sturgeon will hang about, but what she’s going to do with the rest of this parliamentary session and the legacy she will leave when she does choose to depart. Although the list of failures is lengthy ─ the chances are that even if she stays another three of four years there is more chance of her sailing off into the sunset aboard HMS Carrick than a Ferguson Marine ferryboat ─ her moulding of Scotland’s political landscape is undeniable.

Set aside all the virtue signalling of gender recognition reform and hate crime, the real hallmark of her tenure has been wealth redistribution and the use of new powers to raise tax and use it to increase welfare payments like child benefits, which a new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out will increase after-housing-costs income for an average single parent with two children by 19 per cent. Devolved benefits will give the poorest tenth £580 a year more than in England and Wales, and according to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, devolved social security benefits will increase by about £1bn next year, from £4.2bn this year to £5.2bn in 2023-24, most of it on disability payments.

But the IFS shows it’s not just the wealthy who foot the bill, with devolved taxes pushing down the average Scottish household income by £210 since 2017, and the disability payment increase tallies with an expected £1.2bn from higher income tax receipts, with everyone earning £25,000 paying about £100 more income tax than in England, and those on £50,000 stumping up an extra £2,000. Whether for better or worse depends on your point of view, but the redistribution of income from earners to the poorest will be extremely difficult for any new administration to alter, and the most likely replacement would be another centre-left alliance with a similar agenda, just without the independence fixation.

Who generates this cash is the other side of the Sturgeon equation, and Scottish Government figures show fewer registered businesses than at any point since 2016, with 175,175 VAT or PAYE-registered enterprises in 2022, 4,000 fewer than 2020. Just 2,340 businesses employ more than 250 people, the lowest since 2015 and only just over 6,000 companies employ over 50 staff.

The latest Royal Bank of Scotland purchasing managers’ index revealed Scottish private-sector employers cut overall headcount for a second consecutive month in January, compared to a flat position across the UK. Its Scottish business activity index of combined manufacturing and services output has dropped further beneath the level needed for expansion, and so decline is accelerating.

RBS Scotland board chair Judith Cruickshank said it was “unlikely that the sector will bounce back anytime soon” and predicted further job losses, a view mirrored by last week’s warning from Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allander Institute that Scotland could be in recession until October.

So, whatever is wrong with the UK economy, it’s worse here. Same overall economic conditions, but a worse output and when the possible variables are examined most of them track back to the political landscape.

Maybe London masks poorer conditions in places like Lancashire and Yorkshire, but given the higher levels of public spending and claims to be investing in Scotland’s future, it’s not unreasonable to expect a bang for the extra Scottish bucks. Whether she goes sooner or later doesn’t matter, an uncompetitive Scotland with diminishing ability to pay for Nicola Sturgeon’s socialism is here to stay.