Happy birthday Nicola, so what’s next?

Birthdays with a zero on the end are like performance reviews with the boss, except you are the boss. How am I doing? Am I happy? Do I need to change? What do I do next? Tomorrow Nicola Sturgeon celebrates her 50th birthday. Her answers to those questions will determine Scotland’s future as well as her own.

Some people take milestone birthdays in their stride. Ms Sturgeon is not one of those people. In a recent interview with Holyrood magazine she admitted that she hated turning 40 and had been bewildered at the thought of a half-century. “To be frank,” she said, “I entered this year thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m about to be 50, how did it get to this, how did I become