Sturgeon\u2019s political partnership with her predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond, dominates the memoir far more than any of her romantic relationships.<\/p>\n
She describes tensions that existed between them long before their catastrophic falling out over her government\u2019s handling of sexual harassment complaints against him. Salmond later stood trial and was cleared of all 13 charges, although a pattern of bullying and inappropriate behaviour towards younger female staff emerged in court.<\/p>\n
Asked directly in pre-publication interviews if she had known about Salmond\u2019s alleged behaviour, she insisted she had not, telling Sam Baker on The Shift podcast: \u201cI have searched my own soul over this so many times.\u201d<\/p>\n
The memoir includes a forensic deconstruction of the conspiracy theory espoused by Salmond before his death last autumn that the allegations were confected by Sturgeon\u2019s inner circle \u2013 \u201che was determined to destroy me,\u201d she writes \u2013 and she includes the startling suggestion that Salmond himself may have leaked the initial story to the Daily Record.<\/p>\n
Her treatment of Salmond has drawn immediate fire from his allies. The former SNP MP Joanna Cherry accused Sturgeon of \u201cimpugning a dead man who cannot defend himself\u201d while others have demanded a retraction and an apology to his widow, Moira.<\/p>\n
David Clegg, the journalist who broke the story after receiving an anonymous envelope containing details of the harassment investigation, described Sturgeon\u2019s allegation as \u201ca conspiracy theory too far\u201d.<\/p>\n
He told the BBC: \u201cIt shows the level of suspicion and the deep rift that had formed between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon prior to his death.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Writing about the bruising parliamentary passage of her flagship gender recognition measures, aimed at making it easier for a trans person to change their legal sex, Sturgeon uses far more ameliorative language than she has done before.<\/p>\n
She admits she should have considered pausing the legislation as the debate around it became increasingly toxic, although she says she still \u201cfervently believes\u201d that the rights of women and the interests of trans people are not irreconcilable.<\/p>\n
She writes how she was \u201cblindsided\u201d when the case of the double rapist Adam Graham, who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson, came to light and \u201cgave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people\u201d.<\/p>\n
She accepts she \u201clost the dressing room\u201d when she was unable to answer directly whether Bryson was a woman. In interviews now she remains evasive on that question, saying someone who commits a crime of such gravity \u201cforfeits their right\u201d to change gender, and explains that \u201canything I say about Isla Bryson will immediately be taken and transferred to every trans person\u201d.<\/p>\n
The campaign group For Women Scotland, which opposed the measures, has accused Sturgeon of belatedly displaying \u201cretro reasonableness \u2026 in order to promote her book\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Sturgeon is legally constrained in what she can write about Operation Branchform, the Police Scotland investigation into the SNP\u2019s finances, while her husband, Peter Murrell, a former party chief executive from whom she is now separated, awaits trial for embezzlement.<\/p>\n
But she describes feeling as if she had \u201cfallen into the plot of a dystopian novel\u201d when the police knocked on her door to arrest Murrell in April 2023 and she was arrested herself a few months later. \u201cI was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
And although she insists she knew nothing of the alleged embezzlement, she writes of the shame she felt at how others would interpret events. \u201c\u2018No smoke without fire\u2019 is a strong human instinct,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
In another striking moment of candour, Sturgeon describes having a panic attack \u201con the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe\u201d as she struggled to edit the Scottish government\u2019s white paper on independence.<\/p>\n
The 2014 campaign was \u201clike trying to push a boulder up hill\u201d, she writes, and she is particularly critical of what she describes as biased and London-centric media coverage.<\/p>\n
She assesses her later strategy critically and accepts she was \u201cprobably wrong\u201d to try to cast the 2024 general election as a de facto independence referendum \u2013 but predicts that \u201cwithin 20 years \u2026 the UK in its current form will no longer exist\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
In a line pored over by interviewers, she writes: \u201cI have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary.\u201d Pressed on what she meant by this, Sturgeon \u2013 who has been the subject of prurient and often lesbophobic speculation in the past \u2013 said she was not intending \u201csome big revelation\u201d and that she hoped in future her relationships would remain private matters.<\/p>\n
On the breakup of her marriage, she writes that the strain of the police investigation was \u201cimpossible to bear\u201d. She also writes with graphic honesty about the gruelling miscarriage she went through aged 40, and shares the name she had chosen for the baby, whom she believed would be a girl, Isla.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The title of the memoir, Frankly, raised some eyebrows when it was announced considering the repeated criticisms of Sturgeon\u2019s government for its lack of transparency, in particular during the Covid pandemic. Evidence to the UK Covid inquiry revealed mass deletions of WhatsApp messages by senior Scottish government figures and unminuted crisis meetings.<\/p>\n
Sturgeon reveals she sought counselling for the first time in her life when she came \u201cperilously close to a breakdown\u201d after giving evidence to the inquiry \u2013 where she was confronted with a \u201cdevastating\u201d accusation that she had been self-serving and politically motivated.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Sturgeon writes of the misogyny and sexism she faced \u2013 \u201cso endemic that I didn\u2019t always recognise it as such\u201d \u2013 and the pressures she put on herself. \u201cLiving up to the honour of being the first female incumbent of my office became almost an obsession,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She sets out how a male MSP bullied her during her first term at Holyrood, spreading a \u201chorrible\u201d rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex and giving her the nickname \u201cgnasher\u201d.<\/p>\n
She also writes about how she was accompanied by almost crippling self-doubt, but she told Baker on The Shift that she believed her lack of confidence became her \u201csuperpower\u201d as it fuelled her ferocious work ethic and determination to succeed.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Sturgeon says at the conclusion of her memoir that she is more content and more resilient than she has ever been, and that the process of writing has been \u201ca form of therapy in action \u2026 amidst a constant cacophony of voices claiming to know me better than I do myself\u201d.<\/p>\n
She has hinted she may leave Scotland for a time, telling a BBC News podcast: \u201cThis may shock many people to hear, but I love London.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Her relationship with Alex Salmond Sturgeon\u2019s political partnership with her predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond, dominates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-338712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115016388010643581","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}