The Mayor said his dealings with Ms Sturgeon \u2013 who was first minister in Scotland for over eight years \u2013 were \u201cvery cordial\u201d.<\/p>\n
But with the SNP having been in government in Edinburgh since 2007, he accused them of having \u201choarded power\u201d, saying this had left many Scots feeling \u201cdisillusioned with the Scottish Parliament\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Sir Sadiq said that both \u201cCardiff and Edinburgh are as centralised as Whitehall\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe\u2019ve had the SNP in power for a long time in Scotland, and I think they have hoarded power.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he said he was \u201clooking forward\u201d to a change at next May\u2019s Holyrood elections, when he said the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar would be \u201celected as the first minister\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the Labour Mayor stressed his dealings with Ms Sturgeon during the Covid pandemic had been \u201creally good\u201d, adding \u201cshe was a grown up\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sir Sadiq continued: \u201cNicola Sturgeon was on top of her brief, she knew her stuff, as did Mark Drakeford.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was always courteous to me, we would speak offline about some of the challenges with the government, whether it was Theresa May or Boris Johnson, and my dealings with her were very cordial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mayor said his dealings with Ms Sturgeon \u2013 who was first minister in Scotland for over eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-353462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115048215014473989","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353462","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=353462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}