Nicola Sturgeon reveals her sexuality ‘isn't binary' in bombshell new book
The ex-First Minister addressed the subject of her private life in the new memoir Frankly - set to be released next week.
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Nicola Sturgeon has opened up about her sexuality in her upcoming book
Credit: Reuters
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Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell announced their split in January
An extract from her upcoming book has been released this evening.
As reported by The Times, Ms Sturgeon writes: "For many of those peddling it, 'lesbian' and 'gay' are meant as insults. However, while the fact I was being lied about got under my skin, the nature of the insult itself was water off a duck's back.
"Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters."
Salacious rumours have circulated for the past decade about Ms Sturgeon's private life and sexuality.
Around 2016, word began to spread on social media and in powerful circles that she had moved into a house with a female lover, but these were repeatedly dismissed by aides as baseless conspiracy theories, and there was no evidence to support them.
In an interview in 2020 with the Sunday Times, Ms Sturgeon was asked about a 'caravan of rumours' about her private life and said: 'This sort of exotic double life that I'm supposedly leading is a damn sight more interesting than the actual life I'm leading.
'It does not have a scintilla of truth or basis in reality. It is just so completely off the wall.'
NICOLA & PETER: TIMELINE
1988: Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell first meet at an SNP youth event.
2003: Then-Glasgow list MSP Ms Sturgeon and SNP chief executive Mr Murrell begin their relationship.
July 16, 2010: The couple tie the knot with a ceremony at the Oran Mor in Glasgow's west end.
April 2, 2023: Ms Sturgeon claims online rumours and the need to seek more privacy was 'part of the reason' for her resignation as First Minister.
April 5, 2023: The home of the couple, near Glasgow, is searched by police, with a separate raid on the SNP's Edinburgh HQ, as part of their investigation into the party's finances. Peter Murrell is arrested and quizzed by cops for 12 hours before being released without charge.
April 8, 2023: A £110,000 luxury motorhome is seized by cops from outside the home of Mr Murrell's mother.
April 28, 2023: Ms Sturgeon and Mr Murrell are spotted for the first time since the raid on their Uddingston home. She dismisses rumours around her sexuality, including one that she had an affair with a female French diplomat.
June 11, 2023: Police Scotland officers arrest Ms Sturgeon and take her for questioning as part of their probe into SNP finances. She is released without charge and insists that she is innocent of any wrongdoing.
August 10, 2023: At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Ms Sturgeon rubbishes claims her marriage is in trouble, telling an audience: 'My marriage is not something anyone should worry about'.
October 1, 2023: During a podcast, Ms Sturgeon insists her marriage is not on the rocks. She says: 'We are still married and will be married for a long time to come'.
April 18, 2024: Mr Murrell is re-arrested by cops and is charged with embezzlement in connection with the investigation into SNP finances.
April 26, 2024: Ms Sturgeon spotted at the annual Diva Awards with pal Val McDermid in London without her wedding ring.
December 2024: Ms Sturgeon says she is in the dark about the ongoing police investigation, adding: "I am just getting on with my life as best I can at the moment."
January 11, 2025: During an interview with the Financial Times, Ms Sturgeon says politics was 'all-consuming for a long, long time', having been married to Mr Murrell for over a decade.
January 13, 2025: In a social media post, Nicola Sturgeon announces the end of her marriage to Peter Murrell and says they have been separated for 'some time'
Ms Sturgeon ultimately denied she was having an affair with a female French diplomat - one of the best-known claims - in an interview with the BBC in April 2023 after she stood down as First Minister.
BBC Scotland's political editor Glenn Campbell put it to Ms Sturgeon that people were speculating about her marriage and sexuality on social media and she replied: "I read accounts of my life on social media and I think, 'you know, it is so much more glamorous sounding and so much more exciting'. You know I've got houses everywhere if you believe social media."
The Beeb man then asked her: "Which French diplomat are you having an affair with?"
Nicola Sturgeon breaks silence after being cleared over SNP finance probe
Ms Sturgeon laughed and said: "I'll tell you off camera which one it is supposed to be but whichever one it is we've actually had a laugh about it."
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Nicola Sturgeon shared fresh details in her new memoirs, Frankly
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Nicola Sturgeon is pulling the oldest trick in the book of spin: misdirection. In her memoirs, Frankly, she reportedly says she has never considered her sexuality 'binary'. I'm not sure what that means but whatever it is, I'm very happy for her. What I'm less happy about is all the time we're spending on the former first minister's private life when it is her public life that matters. For though I've no doubt Sturgeon would rather avoid a public conversation about her sexual orientation, which is no one else's business after all, she would much rather avoid a public conversation about her legacy, and that is very much everyone's business. Cast your mind back to the turbulent months that followed Scotland's decision in 2014 to remain part of the United Kingdom. Alex Salmond resigned and Sturgeon became his successor as SNP leader without a single vote cast, and she was thereafter chosen by MSPs to become first minister of Scotland, the first woman to hold that office. 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From Salmond she inherited a majority government, a divided opposition, and 45 per cent of voters in favour of independence. She parlayed this into a landslide victory in the 2015 general election, leading the SNP to victory in all but three seats north of the border. That is a signal achievement for which she deserves much credit. It is possible to argue that Sturgeon was a woeful first minister while acknowledging her considerable talents as a strategic operator. She persuaded intergenerational Labour voters to abandon the party of their parents and grandparents, took the SNP to unprecedented heights in membership numbers, and packed concert arenas with adoring fans. She was a political star. But it's what you do with political stardom that matters, and Sturgeon did so little of merit considering the powers at her disposal and the opportunities handed her by opponents and chance. For Nationalists, the first item on the charge sheet against her will always be this: she failed to deliver independence. Despite Brexit. Despite unpopular Tory governments. Despite Jeremy Corbyn and a divided Labour party. Despite austerity. Despite the Internal Market Act. Despite the pandemic. Despite Partygate. Despite the cost-of-living crisis. Despite Liz Truss. Opportunity knocked and knocked but Nicola never answered. Any relief Unionists might feel at her failure is tempered by her performance on the everyday matters of Scottish life. She was the first minister who saw Scotland become the drugs deaths capital of Europe. She pledged to close the attainment gap in education - asked to be judged on it, no less - and instead it widened on her watch. As health secretary she introduced 'legally binding' treatment time targets that, as first minister, she watched being routinely missed. She couldn't get two ferries built and so she launched one with pretend windows instead. She touted her government's world-leading climate targets but grew quiet every time emissions levels zoomed right on past them. She put the rights of women and girls in jeopardy with her reckless, scientifically illiterate gender reforms, and left Westminster to step in and save female Scots from their own parliament. As to the truth about the Salmond affair and the Holyrood inquiries that followed, we might never know the full story but it seems plain to me that we don't know even half the story at this stage. That is another legacy of Sturgeon's first ministership: secrecy and resistance to transparency became hallmarks of the Edinburgh government on her watch. Even so, there must be a reason she sought out a political career within Scottish nationalism. I'm sure she believes in independence in theory but in practice she showed herself more interested in self than in self-determination. Similarly, her concerns about care-experienced young people and the educational opportunities of socially deprived children strike me as sincere, but she was not just a commentator. She had the power to change things and yet she did so little of any consequence for anything other than her career. Sturgeon didn't get to the top by herself but she seems to have got there only for herself. Every politician I have ever discussed the matter with has said the same: the lowest point in government is better than the highest point in opposition. For a simple reason: power. Government means the power to change things, to strip away old failing policy and install something new and up to scratch. It's not primarily an issue of legislating. That takes time and involves all sorts of hoops and hurdles. But ministers have everyday powers that can be exercised with the flick of a pen. The choice is not only whether to exercise those powers but how and to whose benefit. Sturgeon made her choices and Scotland is still living with them years later. It is not merely that she failed to improve her country, it's that she left her country in a worse state than she found it. Schoolchildren, and particularly the poorest, were worse off because Sturgeon became first minister. Scotland's health service didn't get the reform it needed to serve patients' needs because Sturgeon ditched a career in law for one at Holyrood. Amid the pandemic, a point at which Scottish businesses needed all the help they could get, she struck a pact with the Greens, took her government to the left and alienated entrepreneurs. Last week she was warning against working with Donald Trump, but who would solicit her advice? She obtained power, she did nothing with it, she has little to show for it. Sturgeon is in no position to be doling out lessons in what not to do in politics. She is the lesson. For almost a decade, Nicola Sturgeon had the levers of power at her disposal, and although she made plenty of noise, the machinery of change seldom registered more than a murmur. Hers was an epoch of idleness. Kitty Muggeridge once said David Frost 'rose without a trace'. Sturgeon governed without one. Now she speaks of frankness. It is a cause to which she is a decidedly late convert, but if she so wishes let's be frank. Eleven years ago, she became first minister. Unparalleled power, unmatched opportunities, a country for the improving. Eventually, she got a book advance out of it. What did Scotland get? In an interview with a Sunday broadsheet, Sturgeon says she might move to London. Frankly, Scotland would be better off today if she'd done that eleven years ago.
