As slippery as her marine namesake

Sturgeons have long been associated with Russia and caviar but their habitats range further than the largest country in the world. In England and Wales, the sturgeon, along with whales and porpoises, is a royal fish, and every sturgeon caught here is the property of the Crown.  Sturgeons have been referred to as "primitive fishes" because their morphological characters have remained relatively unchanged since the earliest fossil record.  North of the Border, something like a monarchical coronation has been taking place with primitive emotions (unchanged since the earliest record) at the heart of it.
With all the the formality of a North Korean election, Nicola Sturgeon will be the sole candidate for leadership of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to replace the outgoing Alex Salmond.  With a surge in membership to 84,000, making the SNP the third largest political party in the country (by membership), this is an opportune time to take over, even if it is in the wake of defeat in the Scottish independence referendum.
After being arguably the outstanding politician of his generation nationally, Salmond hailed his replacement as “the outstanding politician of her generation in Scotland”.  Though he didn't mean to demean her with the qualification of 'Scotland', it was one of Salmond's more truthful utterances in doing so.  Salmond had to rescue the SNP from irrelevance after the party was dead in the water under the pathetic leadership John Swinney (current Treasury Minister for the SNP) who took over after Salmond's first stint, so it wouldn't be him.  The Scottish Labour Party are seriously lacking in quality (reflecting their nation as whole, much of the best talent goes south to London), the Liberal Democrats are in the same boat as Labour and the Tories are nowhere (though did poll more than 400,000 in 2010).  Further down the radar, the Green Party is anonymous and the less said about Tommy Sheridan the better.  So, of course, the mantle falls to the woman who once snapped in a public forum, "what's wrong with being chippy?"  She should be right at home with her anti-English brigade.