Scotland has long been an outlier in European politics. In many countries, the economic crisis of neoliberalism brought electoral turbulence; Scotland, by contrast, has experienced a peculiar, punctuated political stability as nationalists supplanted Labour as the natural governing class.

Under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership the Scottish National Party (SNP) won eight consecutive elections. It was helped, variously, by the lingering left-populist energies of the 2014 independence referendum, the backlash against Brexit, and Sturgeon’s popular profile as SNP leader.

Despite the party enduring multiple scandals, Sturgeon outlasted four prime ministers in London. She was the greatest beneficiary, politically, of the persistent mood of emergency that has surrounded the British state: around it, the SNP has successively mobilized, demobilized, then remobilized again in predictable cycles, promising independence referendums that never actually occurred. This formula secured the SNP a lasting electoral advantage, as the national question became the main issue polarizing Scottish society.