No, of course Sturgeon's departure doesn't end the independence campaign for a generation. Don't be silly.

Iain Macwhirter has concluded his (predictably scathing) Spectator piece about Nicola Sturgeon's departure from the Scottish Parliament by declaring that hopes of independence are now finished for the next generation.  That's obviously nonsense, and it reminds me of the STV reporter who concluded his report on the Livingston by-election in 2005 by declaring "the SNP's dreams of taking power at the next Holyrood election now lie in TATTERS".  Of course the SNP did actually take power at the following Holyrood election less than two years later.  The lesson is that pundits are often extremely bad at predicting the medium-term future, not least because it's not as simple a task as just crudely extrapolating from present-day trends.  Those trends can often go into complete reverse (as we've already seen in the last few months), totally unexpected events can occur and the prevailing political mood can turn on its head.

It's not even clear that Nicola Sturgeon doesn't still have a role to play in bringing independence about.  She's occasionally been touted as a potential figurehead for a future Yes campaign, and she could just as easily do that from outside parliament as from within.  Such a prospect wouldn't even particularly fill me with horror as long as she wasn't making strategic or policy decisions and was just lending her immense communication skills to the cause.  However, whether it would be a good idea or bad idea depends on whether her reputation recovers.  Polling a few months after her resignation as First Minister suggested her popularity had plummeted.

There are two potentially positive aspects to her departure: a) it might draw a line under the Salmond v Sturgeon war and allow the schism in the independence movement to be at least partially healed, and b) it might bring an end to her 'overlordship' over the present-day SNP and ease the sense that the faction she controls never truly left power.  Obviously those two points are linked, because the Salmond v Sturgeon war will never be truly over if one of the main combatants is still pulling the strings.  There's no guarantee that the Sturgeon Raj will end simply because she is no longer in the debating chamber, but we've seen in the past that backseat drivers can only drive for so long, especially from outside parliament, so perhaps this is the defining moment when John Swinney and Kate Forbes can start to fully break with the shackles of the past and shape the Scottish Government in their own image.

Ironically, there are negatives to that, because towards the end of her tenure, Sturgeon had it basically right on independence strategy (backing a de facto referendum) while Swinney, Forbes, Yousaf, etc all had it wrong.  But the chances of Sturgeon returning to the top job on a platform of radicalising the independence strategy were always negligible, so perhaps there's nothing to really be lost at this point as she vacates the stage.  And of course it neatly shields the SNP from any fallout if she and people close to her run into any legal complications.