The new First Minister has wasted no time in naming her ministerial team and will need their collective talent and experience in the face of challenges tougher than anything her predecessor faced.
Sturgeon must try to live up to the expectations of her party's tens of thousands of new members, many of them far more radical in their left-wing aspirations than the SNP's traditional membership. While sympathetic to those aspirations, Sturgeon will be well aware that a major left-wing shift could adversely affect the SNP's election-winning capabilities.
Holyrood is set to acquire more powers over taxation and borrowing next year, in a tough climate for public finances, and extensive further capabilities under the Smith proposals. Whatever the new First Minister does or does not do with those powers is likely to prove contentious. She has also pledged to fund the NHS at a higher rate than inflation, but highly necessary though this is, it could spell more savage cuts in other government departments.
Still, her reconfiguration of portfolios, doing away with some of the selection-box job titles (no more Cabinet Secretary for Commonwealth Games, Sport, Equalities and Pensioners' Rights) and creating more coherent political silos, perhaps indicates a desire to focus less on long-term constitutional aims and more on day-to-day government.
She will be assisted by an experienced and popular deputy in John Swinney. She has also sent a strong message by allocating 50 per cent of Cabinet posts to women. There is no tokenism here: Shona Robison, Angela Constance and Roseanna Cunningham have earned their promotions to health, education, and work and skills.
Robison is a former public health minister, but will be under no illusions about how tough a brief she now has. The Herald's Time for Action campaign has highlighted growing pressures on the NHS caused by the ageing population and Robison will have to bring fresh, creative thinking to dealing with the urgent problems it already faces as well as preparing adequately for a challenging future.
During Angela Constance's spell as Secretary for Training, Youth and Women's Employment, youth unemployment has reduced and women's employment has surged; though this is certainly not all attributable to her, she has handled her brief well.
It is no surprise that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has gone - had it not been for the politically sensitive referendum campaign, he would likely have departed sooner. To his credit, he was a minister who wanted to achieve things, but he presided over a series of problems, such as a turf war between Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority, and deadlock in his attempts to reform corroboration. The quietly impressive Michael Matheson, who replaces him, must be bracing himself to deal with the fall-out of these and other matters.
No-one in the new Cabinet will expect an easy time, but we wish them and the new First Minister well.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article