RARELY can a vote for the status quo have caused as much upheaval as the referendum.

Though the Union carries on, Scottish politics abounds with change on multiple fronts.

This week sees one of the biggest transitions. On Friday, Nicola Sturgeon will succeed Alex Salmond as leader of the SNP, a party he has led for 20 years, seven of them as First Minister. The following week, she will be sworn in as Scotland's first female First Minister.

It is not just a handover in terms of personnel. As Sturgeon ­indicates in today's Sunday Herald, it is also a move into a new era for the SNP. It is clear she intends to stamp her mark.

Given Salmond's dominance of Holyrood, she is right to emphasise her own political credo early on and tell the country what she stands for.

Her vision of the SNP as a party of not just constitutional change, but also of social justice and equality is in line with her instinctive tack to the left during the referendum. But it is also shrewd politics given the many challenges she faces.

The SNP's extraordinary membership surge has brought with it a burden of expectations. Some of those who joined after September 18 want to return to the fray, and use next May's General Election as a second referendum. Those expectations have to be managed.

Sturgeon is right to resist suggestions that her party should lead the charge for a new referendum in the immediate future, and right to insist that any such calls should come from the people of Scotland rather than its politicians.

In the meantime, although independence will always be the SNP's aim, it needs to have another goal if it is to counter accusations that it is obsessed by the constitution and remote from voter concerns. Social justice is that other goal, and a worthy one.

Besides being at the heart of Sturgeon's own politics - she has always defined herself as an end-to-a-means Nationalist who would renounce independence to end child poverty - it was a key attraction for many new SNP recruits.

It is also, or rather was, Labour's home turf. That party is also in transition right now - from mass movement to minority interest.

By planting the SNP's flag on the values Labour abandoned, amid the heartlands it ignored, Sturgeon can take her party to greater success.

The General Election is as big an opportunity for the SNP as it is a threat to Labour.

Of course, Sturgeon must walk the walk, as well as talk the talk. SNP policies to redistribute wealth and fight inequality must accompany the rhetoric.

But overall, hers are the challenges of success, while Labour's are those of failure.