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Spectator
6 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
What is the point of Nicola Sturgeon's memoir?
Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly, finally published today, is already looking like the most ill-advised autobiography since Prince Harry's Spare. Her attempts to denigrate her former mentor, the late Alex Salmond, have rebounded disastrously. Her teasing about her 'non-binary' sexuality sounded contrived. Her complaints of victimhood ring hollow coming from a politician who had a relatively easy ride during her time in office, not least because the metropolitan left and much of the media chose to idolise her as a Caledonian Jacinda Ardern and scourge of Boris Johnson. She even picked a pointless new fight with J.K. Rowling. In her memoir she accuses the author of having made her feel 'less safe' in 2022 at the height of the trans self-ID row by wearing a t-shirt suggesting the FM was a 'destroyer of women's rights'. Rowling is now proposing to auction a copy of Frankly defaced with her comments for the benefit of For Women Scotland. The pettiness is what really surprises. Whatever you thought about her policies, in nearly 20 years at the summit of politics – eight of them as first minister – Sturgeon was widely regarded as a class act. She was always well briefed; a gifted communicator who rarely put a foot wrong – until her adoption of radical transgender ideology. But even here, most believed she was at least sincere in her LGBT advocacy, if disastrously misguided in her conviction that men could change sex (and that a double rapist, Isla Bryson, could in any sense be called a woman). However, in the pages of her memoir and in the interviews she has given in advance of its publication, Scotland's leading living nationalist emerges as an inveterate gossip with a casual attitude to the truth and a rather tasteless inclination to defame the dead. She even boasts about trading salacious sexual tittle-tattle about Salmond with the late Queen Elizabeth II who, we learn, 'loves a bit of gossip'. This may well be true, but is too much information. But it is the distortions of historical fact that are most disturbing. Sturgeon says Alex Salmond was 'implacably opposed' to the same-sex marriage legislation passed in 2012 while he was first minister. 'Fiction' says Alex Neil, the former SNP health secretary who actually piloted the legislation through Holyrood. Salmond, he tweeted, was a firm supporter of this ground-breaking legislation. In her ITV interview, Sturgeon described her 'cold fury' that Salmond had not bothered to read the 2013 independence white paper, 'Scotland's Future', the final draft of which she had prepared with a team of researchers and civil servants. She writes: 'I knew his good intention [to read it] would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne.' She says he later phoned her inebriated from a racecourse. Shock, horror. It is true that Salmond was a betting man and wrote a newspaper column on horse racing, but the idea that the then first minister of Scotland, who had been leader of the SNP since 1990 and had taken the party of independence to its first election victory in 2007, and then its first landslide in 2011, was ignorant about SNP policy on independence is just risible. Salmond negotiated the Edinburgh Agreement with David Cameron which led to the independence referendum in the first place. What possible motive could Sturgeon have had for telling a tale that has been contradicted by legal experts such as the former SNP MP Joanna Cherry KC and the former justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who says it is 'laughable'. Sturgeon comes across as a pedantic wannabe with surprisingly little grasp of the big picture. Indeed, in a little-noticed passage in Frankly, she reveals that she is no longer committed to the very independence project she was supposed to have been fighting for. She forecasts, approvingly, that in 20 years, Scotland, Wales and even Ireland''will join with England – enjoying the benefits of the home rule it will gain as a result – in a new British Isles confederation of nations.' That is not the sovereign, Norway-style independence the SNP has always envisaged. It sounds more like the 'devo max' that she excoriated during the 2014 independence campaign. Her assaults on Salmond are all the more tasteless because he can't respond. Nor can he rebut the claim she makes in Frankly that he may have leaked to a tabloid newspaper the story about his alleged sexual misconduct. This was rebutted for him on Sunday by the former Daily Record political editor, David Clegg, who wrote the story about the Scottish government's investigation into Salmond's alleged misconduct. Stuegeon's claim is just 'not credible', he says. Sturgeon, of course, led the Scottish government to subsequent humiliation over this botched investigation in the Court of Session in 2019. What is all this intended to achieve? Is this supposed to humanise her in the eyes of the London media circles she hopes to join? She is considering relocation to London. Nationalist luminaries have lined up to dissociate themselves. Joanna Cherry says she will set the record straight in her own book later this year. Kenny MacAskill fired both barrels at Sturgeon's integrity. 'She is without both shame and honour,' he told BBC Scotland. But what is perhaps more significant than these comments from nationalist politicians who were not exactly close allies has been the deafening silence from SNP politicians, supportive journalists and the party membership. Though, if you listen, you can just hear the squirms of embarrassment.
The National
11-08-2025
- Politics
- The National
Nicola Sturgeon: Alex Salmond 'did not read' 2014 independence paper
In an interview with ITV ahead of the publication of her memoir Frankly, the former SNP leader claimed that Salmond had left her feeling 'cold fury' after declining to engage on the document on which she had led. Produced by the SNP Government in 2013, 'Scotland's Future' was a 670-page white paper outlining 'what being independent can deliver for Scotland and it is why the Scottish Government believes the people of Scotland, individually and collectively, will be better off with independence'. READ MORE: John Swinney: I'm looking at whole range of measures to take against Israel Speaking about overseeing the writing and publication of the white paper, Sturgeon told ITV: 'I remember an evening which I just suddenly had this overwhelming sense of impossibility: 'I can't get this to the point it needs to be at. It's so unwieldy. It's so difficult'. 'I just remember having what I can only describe as a panic attack. I was sobbing on the floor of my office at home and just my heart was racing.' ITV News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham then asked if it was at this point that Salmond, then first minister, had been showing 'very little interest' in the Scotland's Future document. Sturgeon said: 'He really didn't engage in the work of the drafting or the compilation of the white paper at all. He was the leader, he was the first minister, and he hadn't read it. She went on: 'He hadn't read it. He'd maybe read bits – I don't even know if he'd read bits of it. Nicola Sturgeon (right) speaks to ITV's Julie Etchingham in a clip of the interview shared by ITV (Image: ITV) 'I knew I was going to have to sit him down and say, 'Look, you're going to have to read this, and you're going to have to tell me now if there are bits you want to change, because it has to be signed off'. 'He told me he was going on a trade mission to China. I don't think I'd ever felt as much cold fury at him as I did in that moment. 'It just seemed to me like an abdication of responsibility.' The full ITV interview is due to be broadcast on Monday, August 11. Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is due to be published on Thursday, August 14. Ahead of the book's release, extracts have been published in the media, with ITV also releasing clips of their interview with the former first minister. In clips published earlier on Monday, Sturgeon said that she still misses Salmond – who died from a sudden heart attack in October 2024 – and that she had been hit with a 'wave of grief' after his passing. However, she also sparked anger from Salmond's allies after writing in her memoir that she suspected Salmond may have been behind the press learning of the sexual misconduct probe against him in 2018. READ MORE: Kenny MacAskill: SNP leadership should be listening to members at this critical time Elsewhere, Sturgeon has made headlines by saying that she should have 'paused' the Scottish Government's gender reform legislation – which would have made it easier for trans people to change their legal gender. Amid the controversy surrounding the bill, rapist Isla Bryson came into the public eye after being put into a women's prison. Asked about Bryson, Sturgeon told ITV: 'Isla Bryson identified as a woman. I think what I would say now is anybody who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be the gender of their choice.' Asked why she doesn't call Bryson a 'biological male', Sturgeon said: 'They are a biological male but that's about whether … it gets back into the self ID thing. 'I should have been much more straightforward, I wasn't, but that's because of the debate. We'd lost all sense of rationality in this debate. I'm partly responsible for that.'
