What we learnt from Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn3 hours agoShareSaveJames CookShareSaveBBCNicola Sturgeon’s memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts. True to its title, the book has Scotland’s former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health. So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned? Transgender controversyAfter more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw her final months in office marred by rows about trans issues.It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of “rancour and division”.Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have “hit the pause button” to try to reach consensus.”With hindsight, I wish I had,” she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification.SpindriftSturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham, who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson.It was, writes Sturgeon, a development “that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people”.As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson.”When confronted with the question ‘Is Isla Bryson a woman?’ I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights,” she writes.”Because I failed to answer ‘yes’, plain and simple… I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn’t have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for.”In football parlance, I lost the dressing room.”Speaking to ITV News on Monday, Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist “probably forfeits the right” to identify as a woman.JK RowlingThe former first minister also criticises her highest-profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women’s rights”.”It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm,” she writes. Sturgeon adds that “it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women’s safety”.Rowling has been approached for comment.Her relationship with Alex SalmondSturgeon’s mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences.Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government’s handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff.Sturgeon lambasts Salmond’s claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required “criminal collusion” with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors.”He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy,” she writes, adding: “He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all.” The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond’s allies.The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69.The independence referendumNicola Sturgeon recalls a “totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism” as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014.It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to “create a brighter future for generations to come”.The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting.”It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill,” she writes.PA MediaA key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence.At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in “utter despair” and “overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility”.”I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack,” she writes.Sturgeon says Salmond “showed little interest in the detail” of the document and she was “incandescent” when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it.”He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne,” she writes.Operation BranchformSturgeon describes her “utter disbelief” and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023.”With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified.”In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she “had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel”.Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform “the worst day” of her life.She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement.The couple announced they were separating earlier this year.Getty ImagesLeading Scotland during the pandemicFor Sturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes “a torrent of emotion”.Leading Scotland through Covid was “almost indescribably” hard and “took a heavy toll, physically and mentally”, writes the former first minister.She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she “came perilously close to a breakdown”.”For the first time …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]