On the crest of a wave

The phrase encapsulated the fact that he accepted ultimate and personal responsibility for the decisions of government; there would be no "passing the buck".

Unlike Nicola Sturgeon, who has had a decade to prepare for leadership, Truman spent only 82 days as a vice-president before discovering, as they say, that it is lonely at the top.

Just over one month into the role, the new First Minister of Scotland - a "naturally quite private person" thrust into the most unforgiving of spotlights - admits that nothing could truly have prepared her for the step up.

"I think that has been brought home to me," says Sturgeon. "People say this over the years, that the step up - in any walk of life - from being the deputy to being in the top position is a big step. You think you know what it'll be like because you've been quite close to it for a long time but nothing can prepare you for that move up. Over the last month I've really, really realised that that is very true.

"You can be so prepared but the first time you're faced with making a decision, and it is only you left to make that decision - there's nobody else you can get to make it for you - it's quite a lonely moment.

"And it really comes home to you that being in the leadership position is very different to being in the deputy leader position.

"I'm not lying awake all night every night but, yes, of course you have periods when you worry about things and you think very carefully about things, but that's as it should be. Leadership is not something anyone should do lightly and I fully expect there will be more of that in the months and, hopefully, years that lie ahead."

Sturgeon says 2014 has been "the best year of my political life" despite the crushing disappointment of the referendum defeat which left her in tears.

Polls in the days leading up to the ballot had put the result on a knife-edge, with Yes nudging a victory in some samples, and spending the final leg of the campaign trail at home in Glasgow - where voters backed Yes - had, says Sturgeon, given her a false sense of optimism which made the defeat even harder to take.

"I've said this before and my colleagues know that when it comes to election campaigns I'm not the world's greatest optimist," says Sturgeon. "But on polling day I was convinced we were going to win which had obviously been driven very much by living in Glasgow.

"I had been round the country in the last few weeks of the campaign, so I did have a sense of how things were in all different parts of the country but, in the last two or three days, inevitably I started to focus more and more on Glasgow. It was almost like coming home for the final stage of the campaign and there's no doubt that probably did give me a slightly exaggerated feeling about what was going on.

"[On the night of the referendum] I went home from the polling station and we were watching the television coverage. I guess it was within the first couple of results being declared - I think one was Clackmannanshire - where I thought, 'Well, if we were going to win, we really should have won there' - or at least have come closer to winning than we did.

"I'm a veteran campaign player, though. Even if you know in your gut all along that you're not going to win you still have this hope within you, so I clung on to that for a while, obviously throughout that night.

"But if I'm being honest, [the Clackmannanshire result] was the moment in my heart of hearts that I knew it wasn't going to happen. I shed tears that night and over that weekend. And, of course, for those of us in the SNP, we had Alex [Salmond] standing down the next day so that just piled emotion on emotion really. It was a deep disappointment and I had worked, as had so many other people, for that moment for all of my adult life."

If the result itself was the low point in her year, then the campaign itself - and the unexpected fallout in the form of a surge in SNP support - have been the highlights.

The battle for the hearts and minds of voters was fought by politicians while at grass-roots level arguments were heard over key issues in pubs, living rooms and workplaces the length and breadth of Scotland - in stark contrast to the apathy which prevails in regular elections.

For Sturgeon, the enthusiasm among voters who turned out in their hundreds to engage with the debate as she toured in town halls and school gyms to press the case for independence in the months before September 18 was politics at its best.

"I remember before I was ever in politics, when I was young, that was the kind of image you had of politics - of people being really interested and engaged. And, to be honest, that's not usually the reality. As the campaign wore on, more and more people who were undecided came along to these things to try and help them to make up their minds and that was really, really good.

"To have that sense of public interest and engagement was something really special, and I suppose the last six weeks of the campaign will always live in my memory. They were just incredible."

The early hours of September 19 brought with them the news, delivered face-to-face by the First Minister Alex Salmond to his deputy, that he intended to resign from frontline politics. Although Sturgeon tried in vain to talk him out of it - she says she simply believed there was no reason for him to step down - his mind was made up and she could not even persuade him to postpone announcing his decision publicly until the dust of defeat had settled. However, in retrospect, Sturgeon believes "he probably made the right decision".

So, at 44, she faced the prospect of becoming Scotland's first female First Minister. "I deliberately tried not to dwell on it too much that weekend, I just tried to get some rest and see family and switch off a little bit," she says. "But I knew after that I was going to put my hat in the ring. I didn't know at that point who else within the Cabinet might have decided to come forward but, yes, I suppose I knew that if I stood I would have a pretty good chance of being elected. Contemplating stepping up and becoming leader of your party and, consequently, First Minister is daunting - or should be daunting. If you don't feel a sense of trepidation about that you probably shouldn't do it."

Since then, the SNP have experienced an unprecedented explosion in membership - from around 25,000 on September 18 to more than 90,000 today. They are now the largest party in Scotland and the third-largest party in the UK, with one poll days before Christmas predicting the SNP would scoop up 48% of the Scottish vote in next year's General Election, compared to Labour on 24%. Translated into seats, that would see the Labour Party virtually wiped out in its one-time heartland, returning just four Scottish MPs to Westminster in comparison to 54 for the SNP.

Sturgeon may not have achieved the result she had hoped for in 2014, but she is entering 2015 in a position that no SNP leader has ever enjoyed at a UK election.

"I'm looking forward to doing the job, to being First Minister, and I'm looking forward to the General Election - I don't take that challenge lightly. We've got a lot of work ahead of us going into that feeling optimistic," she says.

"It [the growth in party membership] hasn't made up for [the referendum defeat] - I would still rather have had a Yes vote than an increase in membership - but it certainly made it very difficult to get too down over the days that followed. There was a sense of the country still being on a journey, and where that journey ends will be down to majority opinion and I believe it will end in independence.

"I don't remember clearly the 1979 referendum, but I've heard so many people talk about the sense of almost national depression that set in after that and I suppose that was the fear we all had, that if we didn't win a Yes vote then that would happen - but it hasn't happened and it's not going to happen.

"The really strange thing was that very quickly over that weekend a sense of optimism replaced the disappointment. Partly that was the surge in people joining the party and partly it was nothing to do with party politics or Yes and No - there was just this sense that the country had been strengthened by this experience.

"So whether you voted Yes or No there was a renewed sense of confidence about the place.

"It quickly became pretty clear in my mind that while the result was disappointing, the country was never going to be the same again."