f a week is a long time in politics, sometimes 24 hours is quite enough. Consider a day in the life of Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon. It was the evening before the Scottish budget was about to be presented by her popular finance secretary, Derek Mackay. Instead, a call from the Scottish editor of the Sun detonated a scandal that saw Mackay’s once stellar career implode as Sturgeon was advised of his serial texts to a 16-year-old schoolboy. It is alleged that the Sun – no friend of the SNP, though it once had a brief flirtation – sat on its scoop for a week, waiting for the moment of optimum embarrassment. Forbes made a good fist of the budget, but it must have all left Sturgeon wondering why leaders don"t have duvet days One can only imagine the frantic backstage reorganisation in the following hours, before the public finance minister, the young Highland MSP Kate Forbes, delivered the budget statement, and Sturgeon confirmed she had been offered and accepted Mackay’s resignation. By general agreement Forbes made an assured fist of her temporary promotion, but it must all have left Sturgeon wondering why party leaders are prevented from having duvet days. Advertisement Sturgeon’s deputy and education minister had just announced an independent review of attainment shortfalls, her health secretary was juggling high-profile problems in several new hospitals, and one of her erstwhile economic advisers, the entrepreneur Jim McColl, was engaged in a slanging match with a government agency over a botched ferry contract. And waiting to arrive centre stage in the courts is the case of alleged sexual misconduct involving her predecessor, Alex Salmond, charges which he robustly denies but which will inevitably preoccupy the media next month. As the blows rained down, she could have been forgiven for pondering if the locust plague rampaging through east Africa was planning to overwinter in Scotland. And yet, and yet. Despite the next Scottish elections being barely more than a year away, there are reasons why none of these issues will necessarily defenestrate an administration coming up for its 14th year in office. The main reason is the paucity of a credible alternative. The Scottish Labour party, once master of all it surveyed, shed an astonishing 40 of its 41 seats in the 2015 election when the SNP won 56 of the 59 constituencies. Although the nationalists subsequently lost 21 of those in 2017, by the time of the 2019 election, Labour had reverted to having just one Scottish MP, the deputy leadership hopeful Ian Murray, while the SNP, currently polling at 50%, was back up to 48. In December the Scottish Tories lost half their seats and the Liberal Democrats lost their leader, when Jo Swinson suffered defeat in her East Dunbartonshire constituency. The Guardian view on Scottish politics: tough new tests all round Read more That will all still be true in May 2021, though the rumour factory is already speculating about whether a newly ennobled Ruth Davidson will come back to lead her tartan flock from the Lords. And whether the Mackay debacle will occasion a byelection. Counterintuitively, the greatest dangers facing Sturgeon may come from within her own ranks. Her pitch for a new independence referendum is based on her manifesto commitment to call for one if circumstances have materially changed since 2014, “such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will”. Since Scotland voted 62% remain, she is confident that she can trump any “once in a generation” argument advanced by Boris Johnson. She is convinced that only a legally binding referendum, with the underpinning of Westminster granting the necessary order, will allow international recognition of the result, while avoiding widespread unionist abstention. But it’s a softly, softly approach that has frustrated many of her own activists, who see little prospect of the prime minister caving to her demands – not least since he is now the self-appointed minister for the union. Advertisement Sturgeon’s critics would like her to test the matter of who calls which shots in the courts. They mutter too that the Scottish government and cabinet are too tightly controlled by the first minister and her husband Peter Murrell, the party’s chief executive. For the want of another official referendum, many people would like to regard the 2021 Scottish election as a de facto one. Some in Scottish Labour, even some within Scottish Conservative ranks, think it would be a denial of simple democracy if a Scottish government and a majority of the electorate were in favour of another poll on self-determination and Downing Street blocked it. This is a high-risk gamble, however. Scotland’s proportional voting system was constructed to militate against any party gaining an outright majority. The SNP are currently a minority administration reliant on the independence-supporting Scottish Greens. Were 2021 to alter that arrangement, the game might be a bogey, as they say in Glasgow. And instead of gaining independence, Scotland might well find its existing parliamentary powers continually diluted by a Boris Johnson-Michael Gove combo. • Ruth Wishart is a columnist and broadcaster As 2020 begins… … we’re asking readers, like you, to make a new year contribution in support of the Guardian’s open, independent journalism. This has been a turbulent decade across the world – protest, populism, mass migration and the escalating climate crisis. The Guardian has been in every corner of the globe, reporting with tenacity, rigour and authority on the most critical events of our lifetimes. At a time when factual information is both scarcer and more essential than ever, we believe that each of us deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart. You’ve read 11 articles in the last four months. More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. 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