![\"Nigel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2.81745273.jpg\")
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage was criticised by the former SNP leader (Aaron Chown\/PA)<\/p>\nShe spoke about the Reform UK leader on Monday evening at Wigtown Book Festival, where she was discussing her new memoir, Frankly.<\/p>\n
When asked about voters being disillusioned with the established parties, Ms Sturgeon said Mr Farage\u2019s party had risen because \u201cpeople are alienated from traditional politics\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cThose problems are not imagined, they\u2019re real. And no politician worth their salt should pretend that if people are being tempted by Farage, it makes them bad people.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Farage is selling snake oil, and he\u2019s looking for scapegoats. Farage\u2019s analysis is that it\u2019s all immigrants that are causing the problems. But the idea that the UK\u2019s problems are down to immigration is just nonsense.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost migrants who come to the UK come to work or to study. The reason irregular illegal immigration has gone up is Brexit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problems the UK are suffering right now largely stem from the financial crisis exacerbated by Brexit. Who was the chief proponent of Brexit? Yes, I am talking about you, Mr Farage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Sturgeon called on \u201cleft and progressive politicians\u201d to come up with solutions to the problems people are concerned with.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cSo, for goodness\u2019 sake, can politicians of the left and progressive politicians find a backbone, start taking on the nonsense Farage is spouting and come up with better solutions to the problems people are experiencing?\u201d<\/p>\n
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage was criticised by the former SNP leader (Aaron Chown\/PA)<\/p>\n
Sir Keir Starmer was also mentioned by Ms Sturgeon at the event as she said she believed the Prime Minister \u201clegitimises\u201d Mr Farage.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIf I\u2019ve got a real gripe \u2013 and I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve got more than one \u2013 with Keir Starmer right now, it is that instead of offering better alternatives and better solutions than Farage, he seems to legitimise Farage by effectively saying \u2018Yeah, yeah, immigration is the problem\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Sturgeon also revealed she is in the early stages of writing a murder mystery novel.<\/p>\n
She had discussed the idea of a novel with her friend, the Scottish crime writer Val McDermid, and referred to it as a \u201ccounterfactual political thriller\u201d.<\/p>\n
The former SNP leader said: \u201cI am going to give it a go. And I\u2019ve kind of started, and let\u2019s just say it\u2019s in the realms of a political thriller. It\u2019s a bit of a counterfactual political thriller.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did think when I first started, though, that the problem I might have \u2013 given the long years I\u2019ve spent in politics \u2013 is there are probably too many people I want to kill. So you might have a murder literally on every page.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: \u201cNicola Sturgeon should perhaps pick up the phone to her council group in Glasgow who have spent weeks demonising migrants to distract from the financial crisis in local government she started and John Swinney continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cLabour is leading the fight against the divisive grievance politics peddled by Nigel Farage, while Nicola Sturgeon continues to fade from relevance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reform UK has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She spoke about the Reform UK leader on Monday evening at Wigtown Book Festival, where she was discussing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-463896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115294986298058139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463896","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=463896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}