By Lucy Ashton

Irascible Nicola Sturgeon has announced she is quitting the Holyrood parliament as she enters her final year as an MSP.

It is said that all political careers end in disappointment — and hers is no different from so many oithers.

The former first minister will join 18 other Nationalists heading for the door, having spent nearly 30 years in parliament agitating for the break up of the United Kingdom.

She leaves behind her a legacy of division and failure. 

Scottish Tory deputy leader Rachael Hamilton summed up the feelings of many when she said: “Nicola Sturgeon has been the most divisive Scottish politician of the devolution era.”

Sturgeon, 54, has been well paid for her stint as an MSP – and all at the British taxpayer’s expense.

The Scottish Express crunched the numbers and, even when erring on the side of caution, they have revealed that by the time she departs next year, the Glasgow Southside MSP will have been entitled to almost £2.7 million in salaries and pension payments.

Even taking into account the fact Scottish ministers have voluntary opted to accept their ministerial pay at 2009 levels, Sturgeon will have trousered an estimated £2.4m from the public purse. The figure does not include her expenses over the years but does includes her first ministerial pension payments since 2023, payments that will continue even after she steps down, at which point she will also be eligible for an MSP’s pension.

Sturgeon entered parliament in May 1999 and remained on a normal MSP’s salary, which at that point was set at 87.5% of an MP’s pay, until May 2007 when the SNP won a historic victory. She was immediately handed a place in the Scottish Cabinet – and a bumper pay rise – under her former friend, the late Alex Salmond.