Nicola Sturgeon on Leo Varadker's shyness, Enda Kenny's charm and Martin McGuinness's bear hugs

Irish Times

2 days ago

You know there's another British heatwave coming – this summer's fourth – when even Manchester is balmy.
Yet
Nicola Sturgeon
, former first minister of Scotland and once the most powerful woman in UK politics, is cool as a breeze on Monday as she strolls into the bar of the Lowry Hotel in the northwest English city: the halfway point between her Glasgow home and London.
Then she utters a surprising aside which, if someone else had said it, she might have justifiably resented.
'Ach, look at me in these scruffy old things,' the former
Scottish National Party
(SNP) leader says with a smile but still somewhat apologetically.
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Despite the rising temperatures I'm huffing like a sweaty dolt in a formal blazer, regretting my sartorial choices. Sturgeon, meanwhile, is far more appropriately coiffed in light, casual clothes.
And they're neither scruffy nor old, not that it matters. But as we shake hands, my mind returns to a section of her new memoir, Frankly, where she laments the sexism that means women in politics are unfairly judged on their clothing in a way that men are not.
In her book, Sturgeon, is often harsh on herself.
'On many days, even at the height of my political powers, the toughest battle I would fight was with the voice in my head telling me I wasn't good enough,' she writes.
Nicola Sturgeon speaks to reporters in March after announcing she will stand down as an member of the Scottish parliament. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
And as we sit down, she says: 'That lack of confidence, that female sense that you're not good enough – the impostor syndrome … it also became my superpower because it drove me on to try to make up for it by working harder than everybody else.'
Writing about herself rather than talking is Sturgeon 'in her comfort zone'.
In Frankly, she gets comfortable discussing everything from her opinions on British prime ministers such as
Boris Johnson
and taoisigh
Enda Kenny
and
Leo Varadkar
to her travails as Scotland's leader during Covid and her failed efforts to win Scottish independence.
Sturgeon reveals her unlikely friendship with
Martin McGuinness
, the late former
Sinn Féin
deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, and discusses the behind-the-scenes co-operation between the SNP and the Republic of Ireland during the tumult of the
Brexit
negotiation years.
She also reveals much of herself in a candid, if one-sided, account of her bitter falling out with her old mentor, the late
Alex Salmond
, as well as her shock decision to step down as Scottish first minister in spring 2023 – Sturgeon still insists it had nothing to do with an SNP financial scandal that would break just eight days later.
Nicola Sturgeon is hugged as she arrives at the SNP annual conference in Aberdeen in 2023. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
She was arrested in that matter but never charged and always maintained her innocence of any wrongdoing. But the affair has still clouded some perceptions of her.
A leisurely sit-down with her on Monday this week confirms what is obvious in her new book: Sturgeon is a talented and complicated person who juggles certain contradictions.
She was SNP leader or deputy leader for more than 18 years, a politician of substance. While Sturgeon may be seen as one of the most articulate leaders of recent decades who often shone in big moments, she still considers herself a 'shy, awkward introvert'.
There are other contradictions.
Once the victim of puerile, unsubstantiated gossip about lesbian affairs (which she denies), she argues her love life should be nobody's business.
Yet out of nowhere, she also chooses to announce in her book that her sexuality is 'not binary,' a revelation that will inevitably lead some to wonder if she is clearing the way to be redefined in future. She split earlier this year from her husband, former SNP official Peter Murrell, who was at the heart of the party's financial scandal that broke after her exit from the party.
In the Lowry bar on Monday, Sturgeon is always a half a yard out of the metaphorical reach of her interviewer. I can never quite seem to catch up with her as she flits between disarming openness and cautious reserve; between self-assurance over her legacy to moments of uncertainty over key decisions; between gregariousness and icy suspicion at certain questions.
She was a working-class Ayrshire law graduate who became the 'rock star politician' who dominated Scottish politics for a decade.
In a vivid and moving passage about a miscarriage she suffered around New Year's Eve in 2010, she discusses her guilt for once wanting to be childless. She never had children.
Isn't it uncomfortable for a self-described introvert such as Sturgeon to discuss such intimate details of her life with people whom she barely knows?
'I'm no stranger to intense scrutiny of every aspect of my life,' she says.
'Putting the details down in your own words and being asked about them feels exposing and makes you vulnerable. But I wanted to write my story in my words. You owe it to readers to put something of yourself in it.'
Sturgeon says there are 'caricatures aplenty' of her in Scotland that she wants to avoid.
Nicola Sturgeon reacts at the count centre in Glasgow after votes are counted in the UK 2019 general election, which was won by Boris Johnson. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/Getty
Like many Scottish nationalists, she also has an affinity for and an interest in Ireland, long a model of Celtic aspiration for the independence-seeking SNP.
In Frankly, she describes how she got on well with former taoiseach Enda Kenny at British-Irish Council (BIC) east-west intergovernmental meetings, admiring his 'gift of the gab' and how he'd have the UK and devolved nation leaders 'eating out of his hand'.
'I love Enda,' she says on Monday. 'I think he's absolutely brilliant. It was a running joke at BIC that he'd always arrive massively late. Then he'd sit down and launch into the conversation – it wouldn't matter what we were talking about. He would just tell us tales of what had gone on at European Council meetings or whatever. He'd just talk and talk.'
Sturgeon says she was 'really fond' of
Micheál Martin
, but ultimately she was closer to Varadkar because of the overlap in their terms of office during the toughest years of the Brexit negotiations with
Theresa May
and Johnson.
'Leo won't mind me saying this, but when I was there [at BIC meetings] he knew he wouldn't be the only shy person there. He was even more introverted than I was.'
It was McGuinness, however, to whom Sturgeon was most drawn. She believes he saw a sense of vulnerability that resided within her. She writes in Frankly of how he made a beeline to give her 'bear hugs' whenever they met.
Sturgeon acknowledges that her recollections of her warm relationship with a former IRA commander may spur criticism in some sections of Scottish society, a nation that knows something of the sectarian divisions that have plagued Northern Ireland over the years.
'I grew up when the Troubles were in full swing and Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were scary guys from the news,' she says. 'I wasn't in any way naive about Martin's past. But the guy I knew was kind and gentle. His eyes would twinkle at you. He was also 100 per cent committed to the peace process.'
She spoke to him not long before he died in March 2017. He had been 'hale and hearty' at a BIC meeting in November, but by the time he quit politics on health grounds in January, she was 'shocked' by his physical appearance when she saw him on television.
'I texted him. We spoke on the phone. He knew he was seriously ill. We spoke about politics and independence and such matters, of course. But this was a personal thing. I was very fond of Martin. His family invited me to his funeral, but I just wasn't able to go.'
Meanwhile, she also recalls being in a Glasgow lift with President
Michael D Higgins
in June 2016 as news came through that England had been beaten by Iceland in the European football championships tournament. 'We laughed and a little 'wa-hey' moment about it,' she says.
The Irish government was, she says, 'a useful source of information' for her in the depths of the Brexit negotiations – Scots had voted to remain in
European Union
in the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the bloc. Meanwhile, Irish sources say the SNP's then-huge cohort of MPs could also be helpful for the State when Dublin wanted an issue raised in parliament.
Despite Scotland having no obvious political or legal path to ceding from the United Kingdom – an issue that, along with transgender culture wars, contributed to Sturgeon's political exit – she predicts independence for Scotland within 20 years. She also mentions a 'reunified Ireland'.
Does she really believe there will a united Ireland alongside an independent Scotland within two decades? 'Yes. Or even less. If one happened, there would be an impact on the other. Looking from the outside, I think Ireland will be unified again.'
Sturgeon writes in Frankly about how she could feel a sense of support for Scottish independence from Irish people in the post-Brexit years. She also clearly reciprocates on Irish unification.
'I was always careful when first minister not to express a view on it. But my personal view would not be a surprise to you.'
This might explain why she never had a close relationship with
Arlene Foster
, the former DUP leader and first minister of the North. 'Also, many women of our age have to become a bit austere to get on in politics.' (Both are 55 and were born two days apart.)
Sturgeon did not like Johnson: 'I don't like talking in terms of 'liking' people, so maybe I should just say I didn't have much respect for him. He doesn't take anything seriously. In the pandemic, I found that difficult to take. Yes, he can make you laugh. But he thinks you're laughing with him, at how brilliant he is, when often you're laughing because the alternative is to cry.'
She had an awkward personal relationship with May, although she was the British prime minister Sturgeon respected the most. The one she got on best with was
David Cameron
, who gave Scottish nationalists the 2014 independence referendum they looked set to win at one stage but which they eventually lost.
Apart from herself, the most textured character in Sturgeon's book is former SNP leader and first minister Salmond, who died of a heart attack last October. They had been politically close for years – she was his deputy and heir – but they fell out over her handling of allegations within the SNP of historical sexual misconduct by Salmond.
He was later found not guilty in court, a fact to which Sturgeon does not give much accord in Frankly. Instead, she focuses more on their bitter falling out, which she blames on him, and what she still insists was his 'inappropriate' behaviour.
They hadn't spoken for years by the time he died. Still, does she miss him? Sturgeon hesitates.
'I miss the person I thought he was. I miss the relationship we used to have. We had gone from being the closest allies to arch enemies,' she says. 'It's complicated.'
As any follower of Scottish politics might agree, so too is Sturgeon, one of the most gifted, scrutinised, criticised and significant politicians of recent decades.
Nicola Sturgeon will be
in conversation with Susan McKay at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace
on Tuesday, August 19th and
with Matt Cooper in the National Concert Hall
on Wednesday, August 20th. Both events are sold out. Frankly is published by Pan Macmillan.