The Scottish independence vote went 55% No and Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond will step aside once a replacement is voted in at a November party convention.
He said there were a "number of eminently qualified and very suitable candidates" to replace him.
But Nicola Sturgeon, the current deputy first minister and deputy SNP leader, is seen as a clear frontrunner.
We go from a Salmon[d] who couldn't quite make it all the way upstream to a Sturgeon.
They'll have to figure out what their future looks like when they're a tad short on support for breaking away. Would this be a high-water mark on independence, or will London look more toxic in the years to come that could generate a majority win in the near future?
The SNP's status begs comparison to the Parti Quebecois. The PQ (and their BQ federal incarnation) have managed to be the party of the left in Quebec politics despite falling short on two independence votes. However, as of late, they've started to run out of gas, losing support to a conservative soft-separatist CAQ in provincial elections and to the leftist New Democrats on the federal level in the last election.
The PQ has become a Francophone party of the left as independence becomes a distance goal. Will the SNP be merely a Scottish party of the left at this point, or will they have a selling point that differentiates themselves from Labour and the Liberal Democrats?
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