The National:

SEVEN months on from winning a historic election victory in which her party won the highest vote share since devolution, why isn’t Nicola Sturgeon thinking about stepping down?

The fact that she plans on sticking around for this parliamentary term came as a shock to the BBC, who soon had their reporters traipsing around Holyrood asking a Who’s Who of Who’s That their views on the matter.

Jackson Carlaw said it was “bad news for Scotland”, while Alex Cole-Hamilton said “it’s time Scotland had an alternative”.

The time Scotland had an alternative was seven months ago, and it voted emphatically to stick with Sturgeon’s SNP.

The whole “story” might seem nonsensical, and we’re not the only ones to have noticed.

READ MORE: Minister taken aback as reporter asks what Scotland is doing about RESERVED issue

Now, Nicola Sturgeon has herself hit out at the “daft headlines” surrounding her tenure as First Minister, after STV ran a story claiming she “won’t say if she’ll lead SNP into next election”.

Commenting on the story on Twitter, the SNP leader wrote: “If you want to know my position on this beyond the daft headlines, I’d suggest watching the full clip in the article. (tho just 7 months after last election, won by @theSNP with highest ever vote share, I suspect many will see this as a bit irrelevant just now).”

What she actually said was: “Like most people, I’ll think about the next election when we get closer to the next election. But between now and then, I hope Scotland will have voted to be independent.”

Calling the line of questioning “meaningless” and “preposterous”, Sturgeon goes on: “I don’t know many people that would sit here and confidently, definitively, tell you what they’re going to be doing five years from now."

“Actually, I don’t know many other countries where a First Minister, seven months on from winning a historic election victory with the highest share of the vote ever, is being asked to justify their own tenure in office and how long it’s going to last.”

Quite. How about a country where the party elected with 43.6% of the vote gets 56% of the seats in parliament and installs a Prime Minister dealing with letters of no confidence sent from within his own party?

Or a Prime Minister on such bad terms with his own MPs that they don't even turn up to support him at PMQs?

How long would it take the media to start asking him day after day whether he’ll be leading his party into the next election?

We wonder.