Nicola Sturgeon urges SNP to win Scottish seats in general election The Scottish National party's new leader has set her sights on winning a majority of Scotland's seats in the UK parliament next May, an ambitious goal that underscores the SNP's remarkable rebound from defeat in September's referendum on independence. "There can be few leaders anywhere, anytime in a democracy, to have been lucky to inherit a party in better shape than ours," Nicola Sturgeon told an SNP conference in Perth after her unopposed election to succeed Alex Salmond. The SNP holds just six of Scotland's 59 seats at Westminster, but soaring membership and support ratings suggest the party could win a potentially decisive role there if next May's general election results in a hung parliament. "I want this party to leave this conference this weekend with the intention of winning the Westminster election for Scotland next May," Ms Sturgeon told a capacity conference crowd at the 1,200-seat Perth Concert Hall. Scottish voters rejected independence in September by 55 per cent to 45 per cent, but Mr Salmond remains widely popular and the former party leader, who will step down as first minister next week, told cheering delegates on Friday that Scotland was still on course for independence. "The Westminster election offers a real possibility of putting Scotland in the driving seat," Mr Salmond said. If pro-union parties failed to deliver on their pre-referendum promise of the rapid devolution of substantial powers to Edinburgh, "Scotland will take matters into our own democratic hands," he said. Ms Sturgeon's election as party leader after seven years as Mr Salmond's deputy marks a new era for the SNP, which has signed up more than 60,000 new members since the referendum, making it the UK's third-largest party despite drawing on less than 10 per cent of the population. In one of her first moves as leader, Ms Sturgeon won conference backing for a possible rule change that would allow the party to try to tap into the wider pro-independence movement by allowing constituencies to select non-members as candidates. The move could open the way for high profile or celebrity Yes campaigners to stand, although party officials said they did not expect any early announcements of possible candidates. "We are going to harness and take forward that wonderful spirit that we managed to create in the Yes campaign," Ms Sturgeon said. She told the conference another referendum was the only way for Scotland to achieve independence - but kept open the question of when another such vote could be called. The SNP had called September's vote a "once in a generation" event, but now argues that public opinion will decide if the question of independence should be asked again - a stance that outrages pro-union parties that say the constitutional question has been settled. Interim Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the new SNP leaders were "still obsessed by their referendum defeat." "The people of Scotland voted in overwhelming numbers against independence, but now they want to use the general election to fight the referendum again," Mr Sarwar said. In an unexpected result, the SNP elected as Ms Sturgeon's deputy Stewart Hosie, a Westminster MP and the party's Treasury spokesman. Mr Hosie's victory over Keith Brown, the Scottish government's minister of transport, and Angela Constance, its cabinet secretary for training, raises some potential party management challenges. Mr Hosie will not be able to succeed Ms Sturgeon as deputy first minister in the Scottish parliament and his role in Westminster could be complicated if Mr Salmond decided to stand for a UK seat in May as he has hinted he may.