Nicola Sturgeon 'still misses Alex Salmond in some way'
Scotland's former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that she still misses her mentor Alex Salmond 'in some way'.
The pair formed one of the most successful political partnerships in UK history however their relationship deteriorated and then broke down after sexual misconduct allegations against him emerged. Following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2020, Mr Salmond was cleared of all 13 charges, which included attempted rape and sexual offences.
In an exclusive interview with ITV News before the publication of her memoir Frankly on Thursday August 14, Ms Sturgeon said she misses the relationship she used to have with her mentor. And she said she was hit by a 'wave of grief' after hearing of his death in October last year.
Speaking to ITV News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham, she said: 'Even today I still miss him in some way, the person that I used to know and the relationship we used to have.
'But I thought I had made my peace with it, that I'd got to a point where I felt nothing.
'And then I got a call to tell me that Alex Salmond had died. I started crying on the phone and I just was hit by this wave of grief… and it was complicated because obviously we weren't just no longer friends, we were political enemies.
'There was no prospect I was going to be able to go to his funeral or anything like that and it was a kind of strange, strange feeling.'
Mr Sa lmond went on to become leader of the Alba Party, which became a frequent critic of his former party the SNP.
He died suddenly of a heart attack in October in North Macedonia at the age of 69.
Ms Sturgeon, who succeeded him as Scotland's first minister in 2014, said: 'At the point he died, I hadn't spoken to him for years.
'I felt really deeply the loss of the relationship with him. I suddenly didn't have him. He wasn't there. I couldn't talk to him. And I went through this period of I would still talk to him in my head.
'I would have vivid dreams that we were still on good terms. And then I'd have this feeling of such sadness when I remembered the reality.
'So, I went through that process. I still missed him in some bizarre way.'
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During the interview Ms Sturgeon is also asked by Ms Etchingham about her description of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as 'odious' in her memoir.
She said: 'This is my impression, other people might have a different view of him. He just comes across as somebody who's got a very, very fragile ego.
'Somebody who's not particularly comfortable, particularly around women.
'In the 2015 leaders debate just before we went on air that night, I just remember hearing him tell somebody how much he'd had to drink, in the green room area beforehand, and it just felt this kind of bravado and just not very pleasant.'
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Nicola Sturgeon said her famed relationship with Alex Salmond began to deteriorate when she became first minister (Andrew Milligan/PA) The politicians began their inquiry after a judicial review in 2019 found the Scottish Government's investigation into Mr Salmond's alleged misconduct was unlawful, unfair and tainted by apparent bias. Mr Salmond, who died last year, was awarded £500,000 in legal expenses. Ms Sturgeon wrote of the inquiry: 'It also gave the significant number of people who tuned in to watch the chance to see for themselves just how partisan some of the committee members were being. 'Not surprisingly, the opposition majority on the committee managed to find some way of asserting in their report that I had breached the ministerial code. 'However, it was the verdict of the independent Hamilton report that mattered.' She said her infamous falling out with her predecessor was a 'bruising episode' of her life as she accused Mr Salmond of creating a 'conspiracy theory' to defend himself from reckoning with misconduct allegations, of which he was cleared in court. Ms Sturgeon said her former mentor was 'never able to produce a shred of hard evidence that he was' the victim of a conspiracy. Nicola Sturgeon accused Alex Salmond of creating a conspiracy to shield himself from his reckoning with his own behaviour (Robert Perry/PA) She went on: 'All of which begs the question: how did he manage to persuade some people that he was the wronged party, and lead others to at least entertain the possibility? 'In short, he used all of his considerable political and media skills to divert attention from what was, for him, the inconvenient fact of the whole business. 'He sought to establish his conspiracy narrative by weaving together a number of incidents and developments, all of which had rational explanations, into something that, with his powers of persuasion, he was able to cast as sinister.' Ms Sturgeon speaks about Mr Salmond several times in her autobiography, which also has a dedicated chapter to him, simply titled 'Alex Salmond'. In it, she speaks of an 'overwhelming sense of sadness and loss' when she found out about his death, which she said hit her harder than she had anticipated. Ms Sturgeon says the breakdown in their relationship happened long before Mr Salmond's misconduct allegations. She said it had begun to deteriorate when she became first minister in 2014 following his resignation in light of the independence referendum defeat. Ms Sturgeon claims her former boss still wanted to 'call the shots' outside of Bute House and appeared unhappy that she was no longer his inferior. She also accuses him of trying to 'distort' and 'weaponise' his alleged victims' 'trauma' through his allegations of conspiracy. Ms Sturgeon claims that Mr Salmond, who later quit the SNP to form the Alba Party, would rather have seen the SNP destroyed than be successful without him. Despite her myriad claims against her predecessor, though, Ms Sturgeon said: 'Part of me still misses him, or at least the man I thought he was and the relationship we once had. 'I know I will never quite escape the shadow he casts, even in death.'
