Just a power trip?

I HOPE we will soon hear what beneficial results Nicola Sturgeon’s trip to North America will bring Scotland. Will there be new trade deals? Investment? It seems not.

The trip was less about Scotland than about raising Miss Sturgeon’s profile. Commentators suggest that this was because she is planning for an afterlife, once she is heartily sick of Holyrood — which she may already be. The questions this raises about her successor are too depressing to contemplate. The talent pool among Nationalist MSPs resembles water supply in a drought.

And what will Miss Sturgeon do next? Some have drawn a comparison between her and Mary Robinson, the distinguished former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. I certainly hadn’t seen that one coming.

JILL STEPHENSON, Edinburgh.