Nicola Sturgeon: Police investigation ‘was like mental torture'

Powys County Times

9 hours ago

Nicola Sturgeon has opened up about her arrest, describing in her new book how the police investigation was like 'mental torture' and she thought about disappearing into the North Sea.
In an excerpt of her new memoir, Frankly, published by The Times, the former first minister of Scotland spoke about some of the hardest moments of her life, as well as conflicted feelings over motherhood and sexuality.
Being arrested and questioned by the police following the arrest of her ex-husband and the Scottish National Party (SNP) treasurer was the 'worst day of my life', she wrote.
Peter Murrell, the former chief executive officer of the SNP, was arrested in 2023 and later charged with embezzlement, after his and Ms Sturgeon's home was searched by police looking into what happened to £660,000 of donations to the party.
Police also investigated Colin Beattie and Ms Sturgeon but they were later exonerated.
The arrests, Ms Sturgeon said, made her feel like she 'had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel'.
She said she barely slept during the period leading up to her arrest and would wake with her stomach in knots.
She described June 11, the date she was arrested and questioned, as the 'worst day of my life' but added she was partly relieved that her wait was over.
Following her questioning, she went to visit a friend in the north east of Scotland for a week to escape the media glare.
She wrote: 'I spent hours, looking out across the North Sea. At first, I wanted to somehow disappear into its vastness.
'Slowly but surely, though, the sea calmed me.'
But alongside her darker moments was one of her proudest achievements, she said – passing her driving test at the age of 53.
Ms Sturgeon told how she carried a sense of 'dread and anxiety' for a year, during which nothing happened, until April 2024, when Mr Murrell was re-arrested and charged.
But the probe into Ms Sturgeon continued and she admitted she was frightened about the investigation even though she knew she had 'done nothing wrong'.
And she said: 'I retain both faith in and respect for our country's criminal justice system. However, none of that changes this fact: being the subject of a high-profile criminal investigation for almost two years, especially having committed no crime, was like a form of mental torture.'
She wrote of an 'overwhelming' sense of relief and release upon being told she would face no further action on March 20 2025.
Ms Sturgeon also opens up about her miscarriage in 2010, saying she went to work in January while she was in 'constant agony', including a memorial event for the 40th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster.
And she addressed rumours of her 'torrid lesbian affair' around 2020 with Catherine Colonna, who was French ambassador to the UK at the time, and false rumours perpetuated about her issuing a super-injunction to silence the press.
She concludes: '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 30 years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters.'
The former first minister also wrote candidly about the miscarriage she suffered in 2010 and her 'deeply conflicted' feeling at becoming a parent.
It was a chance appointment with her doctor where she mentioned some 'spots of blood' while receiving a flu jab on December 30 of that year which led to an urgent appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary the following day.
'I think I'd known in my heart what the outcome would be, but I was still hoping for the best,' she wrote.
'It seemed that suddenly, belatedly, I wanted to be pregnant after all. The nurse who did the scan was lovely.
'I didn't really know what I was looking for on the screen, but her face told me what I needed to know. The baby was gone.'
'Eventually, four days later, during the evening of January 4, 2011, the pregnancy 'passed',' she said.
'I had the presence of mind to call Peter into the bathroom and, together, we flushed our 'baby' down the toilet. We later resolved to try again, but I knew then that we had lost our one chance.'
She was 'desolate and heartbroken' for herself, but more so for her husband and became 'consumed by guilt' that she had done something to cause the loss of the baby, feelings, she wrote, which have 'never quite left me'.