SNP leadership candidate warns over devolution

Nicola Sturgeon has launched her bid to become the new leader of the SNP and Scotland’s first female first minister with an immediate warning that the Westminster parties will face an angry backlash if they fail to keep the promises they made on more powers for Holyrood.

In the final days of the independence referendum campaign, the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats pledged significant further devolution in the event of a No vote.

With Scotland voting to stay in the UK — a result that prompted Salmond to announce his intention to resign as both SNP leader and Scottish first minister — Sturgeon demanded those promises must be kept.

She said she would be a “willing partner for progress” in talks about transferring responsibility for more areas to the Scottish Parliament.

“If I am elected to lead, I pledge today that the SNP and the Scottish Government will be full, active, genuine and constructive participants in that process of change, wherever it happens — in Holyrood, in meeting rooms and, most importantly of all, in discussions across Scotland.

She said the deal on more powers must be one “that maximises devolution in substance not just in rhetoric”, adding: “That is what I believe the majority of people of this country now want.”

Sturgeon, who is stepping down as SNP deputy leader to run for the party’s top job, said the pro-UK parties had made a “clear and unmistakable” pledge that the package for Scotland would be “something near to federalism”.

She said: “Well, let me say this to Westminster on behalf of Scotland — it had better be.

“If the UK parties move forward in that spirit, they will have, in me, a willing partner for progress.