There was a time when British politicians were not so at the mercy of events, when their support was based on granite, not sand. Nicola Sturgeon was one of them.
As leader of the Scottish National party between 2014 and 2023, she won eight elections in a row — if you count council and European elections, which she very much does. She made nationalism appear progressive, even reasonable. During Covid, she was the political antidote to Boris Johnson — the prime minister whom, WhatsApp messages later revealed, she judged “a fucking clown”.
But the Sturgeon who arrives to meet me in central Edinburgh is more fallible. Windswept by the Scottish winter, she sheds her bright red jacket and slides into the booth. She orders a no-alcohol G&T: a fitting cocktail of control and openness.
Her fallibility today is partly by design. Resigning as Scotland’s first minister in February 2023, she said she wanted to spend time on “Nicola Sturgeon the human being”. Aged 54, she talks about novels, the gym and life “post-politics” (she is still a member of the Scottish Parliament). “I probably hadn’t been alone in a public place for 10 years. You have to relearn how to live,” she says frankly.
But the fallibility is also unwanted. A party funding scandal led to her being arrested in June 2023: she denies wrongdoing but remains under police investigation; her husband has been charged. This looms over her record — as does her failure to find a path to Scottish independence.
Even before that, political gravity was finally tugging at her. Sturgeon had become the feminist accused of violating women’s rights, the social democrat blamed for poor public services, and the campaigner for decentralisation who was herself said to hoard decisions in a clique.
There is a very gendered idea of charisma . . . and there’s something depressing about the notion that unless you’re a Boris Johnson type, you can’t succeed in politics
In 2024’s wave of anti-incumbent election results, the SNP lost most of its seats in Westminster. How much responsibility does she take? “I take a fair chunk of responsibility,” she says. “Whether I always sound it or not, I’m somebody who tends to blame myself for things. But the more time that passes, I think it’s harder to keep blaming me for things . . . There’s some irony: the SNP didn’t lose an election when I was leader, but somehow the first one that they lost when I wasn’t leader was all my fault.”
Sturgeon is a study in the potential — and perhaps the limitations — of being a first-class political communicator. As rightwing populism advances across the west, she is a reminder that the centre-left too can channel voters’ anger, that it does not have to be bland, even if it doesn’t have all the answers.
She insists to me that she is “by nature a really shy and introverted person”. As leader, “going into a room, there would always be a moment of having to steel myself to go and do it”. Yet like Tony Blair before her, she could stand on the shakiest ground without her voice betraying a wobble. She had an X-factor.
I ask if that is often the decisive factor in politics. Take Donald Trump’s victories. Did Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris just lack charisma? “I absolutely think that’s true, I just think there is a very gendered idea of what charisma is.”
In Westminster, Labour’s Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have fallen flat in their first six months in power. They are, Sturgeon says, “just so wooden and stilted”. Is it too late for them to learn charisma? “There’s something quite depressing about the notion that unless you’re a Boris Johnson-type showman, you can’t be successful in politics. Even as somebody from a different political tradition, there is a part of me that wants to see them succeed . . . I just think the political climate we live in right now makes that really difficult, that very serious, managerial approach.”
She is scathing of the Labour government’s “unbelievably terrible” decision to cut winter fuel benefits to pensioners before raising taxes on business. Labour claims that fuel subsidies had to be cut earlier for administrative reasons. “As someone who’s spent a long time in government . . . these sound like the sort of excuses you’d come up with to explain your own stupidity.”
She fears that the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage may end up as prime minister. “Five years ago, I would have said it’s impossible. I don’t think that any more.” Starmer should “make the case for immigration . . . The more he tries to be tougher, and offers solutions that are never going to solve the problem, the more he colludes with the idea that the biggest issue facing the country is out-of-control immigration.”
Sturgeon’s chosen restaurant is closed on Mondays, and she astutely declined its offer to open just for us. So we are at Howies, a busy Scottish diner near Princes Street, with antlers on its walls. No one accosts Sturgeon, but the waiters almost fall over themselves to serve us.
The “most dangerous woman in Britain”, The Daily Mail dubbed my guest in 2015, after she beat Farage, David Cameron and then Labour leader Ed Miliband in a TV debate. I wouldn’t put her in the top five most dangerous women in the restaurant.
Many unionists saw Sturgeon as anti-English. She strains to come across differently. When I mention the town of Kirkcaldy, she tells me I have pronounced it “almost perfectly . . . Did you understand a word that people in Kirkcaldy said to you? Because I don’t,” she jokes.
She orders haggis and a chicken salad. I smell a cliché. Would she normally order haggis? “No — yeah . . . I’m not just doing it for show!” she laughs.
Menu
Howies
24 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh EH1 3BQ
No-alcohol gin and tonic £6.95
Glass of house white wine £6.50
Diet coke £3.25
Haggis, super salad and chargrilled chicken £24.45
Vegan haggis, neeps, tatties and roast cauliflower steak £18.95
Espresso £3.15
Mint tea £3.20
Trussell Trust donation £1
Total (inc service) £74.10
The cause of Scottish independence has marked Sturgeon’s entire adult life.
But Sturgeon has none, which she admits is “sometimes a regret”. She has never married, though she has been with the SNP’s chief executive, Peter Murrell, for 15 years. They don’t have children. “I’ve never had a desire to have children myself . . . I don’t see it as an essential part of my identity, as a woman or as a human being.”
She is not religious either. “I don’t believe in a god,” she says. “I think we’re here for a finite period of time, and we have a deep responsibility to make the most of it.” She enjoys walking in her free time and has a book club. She has read the Harry Potter novels “more times than I can remember” and listens to Taylor Swift. “I’m a bit of a Taylor Swift fan, not in a teenage way . . . I find her quite empowering.”
She has been in politics since she was a teenager; “I’ve given my whole adult life to the SNP, and I’ve never regretted it.” She pauses. “I’ve never regretted it,” she repeats. “I’ve never regretted it.” She is not about to stop. “I may have been more ‘let’s just keep going’ than any other emotion.”
She has outlasted Cameron, May and Brown; she doesn’t mind if she outlasts Johnson. “I can’t imagine doing anything that isn’t politics,” she says. “There’s no point in making any great plans for my life post-politics, because I’ll probably never retire.”
As she finishes her meal, she repeats that “things can feel really stuck, then suddenly they’re not”. She tells me about her first meeting with Salmond, when she was 16. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, he’s amazing’. I wonder if I was ever that person for a 16-year-old.”
She probably was. Doch Sturgeons Ehemann, Peter Murrell, war Geschäftsführer der SNP. „Ja, ja. Es war lange Zeit alles verzehrend“, gibt sie leise zu.
Murrell wurde im April wegen Veruntreuung von SNP-Geldern angeklagt, was er bestreitet. Hintergrund ist, dass über £600.000 für eine neue Unabhängigkeitskampagne gesammelt wurden, aber möglicherweise für andere Zwecke verwendet wurden; ein Luxus-Wohnmobil wurde von der Polizei vor dem Haus von Sturgeons Schwiegermutter beschlagnahmt. Hat der Skandal ihr Leben nach der Politik gezeichnet? „Wenn man das Szenario vorher beschrieben hätte, hätte ich nicht geglaubt, wie ich überhaupt funktionieren könnte. Aber ich habe es geschafft.“
Liz Lloyd, Sturgeons ehemalige Stabschefin, sagte, dass selbst Sturgeon zugeben würde, dass es nicht ideal sei, wenn Ehepartner die beiden Top-Jobs innehaben. Stimmt das? Sturgeon schließt schnell und bestimmt die Jalousien. „Ja. Ich versuche nicht auszuweichen, ich denke nur, dass es uns zu nahe an den Kern des Problems bringt“ – das heißt, die polizeiliche Untersuchung.
Sie wurde auch vom Covid-Untersuchungsausschuss des Vereinigten Königreichs befragt. Sie gab zu, ihre WhatsApp-Nachrichten aus dieser Zeit gelöscht zu haben, weil das Aufbewahren auf ihrem Telefon „nicht sicher“ war. Sie ist skeptisch gegenüber der langwierigen Untersuchung: „Die meisten anderen großen Länder haben ihre Covid-Untersuchung . . . längst abgeschlossen.“ Sie glaubte nicht, dass die Anwälte die richtigen Fragen stellten, „aber wir werden sehen.“
Obwohl Sturgeons Führung so viel besser als Johnsons schien, hatten England und Schottland ähnliche Sterberaten? Sturgeon besteht darauf, dass die altersstandardisierte Sterblichkeitsrate Schottlands „deutlich niedriger“ war. Als ich später die Quelle überprüfe, sehe ich, dass sie Recht hat, obwohl Experten vorsichtig sind, dies mit politischen Entscheidungen in Verbindung zu bringen.
Ihr Hühnersalat scheint bestenfalls halb gegessen zu sein, aber sie hat genug. Als Metapher für ihre Führung der Unabhängigkeitsbewegung schreibt es sich von selbst.
Wir diskutieren, warum es ehemaligen Politikern schwerfällt, Fehler zuzugeben. Angela Merkel, die Sturgeon bewundert, gab nur Fehler bei „zweitrangigen“ Themen zu. Judging by her comments on gender recognition, Sturgeon scheint in ihrem bald erscheinenden Memoiren ebenfalls diesen Weg einzuschlagen. Bevor sie der SNP beitrat, unterstützte sie die nukleare Abrüstung. Hat sie ihre Meinung geändert? „Ich bin immer noch ziemlich da, wo ich damals war“, sagt sie und erläutert die Argumente gegen Kernenergie und Atomwaffen. Der Weg des pro-unabhängigen Politikers besteht darin, zu hoffen, dass sich die Meinungen anderer ändern, auch wenn die eigenen gleich bleiben.
Sie schließt ein Comeback aus: „Ich würde nicht zurückgehen.“ Mit einem Lächeln deutet sie an, dass sie sich 2026 nicht zur Wiederwahl für das schottische Parlament stellen wird. Sie erwähnt erneut ihre Suche danach, ein Mensch zu sein „oder so nah wie möglich an einen Menschen heranzukommen, wie ich es je schaffen werde.“ Sie beendet einen Pfefferminztee, während die Nachbartische in traditionellere festliche Getränke versinken.
Die Nicola Sturgeon, die ich getroffen habe, ist ein Mensch, und ein liebenswerter dazu. Doch eine umfassende Bewertung hängt sicherlich davon ab, wo die polizeiliche Untersuchung endet. Wie seltsam, dass die Politikerin, die nie den Ereignissen schien ausgeliefert zu sein, nun ihren Ruf genau an der entgegengesetzten Stelle hat.
Henry Mance ist leitender Feature-Autor der FT.
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