Nicola Sturgeon has revealed she came ‘perilously close’ to a breakdown last year in the wake of her appearance at the Covid inquiry.
The former First Minister also confirmed that that she is ‘absolutely’ going to divorce her husband Peter Murrell.
Ms Sturgeon said she couldn’t stop crying for weeks, struggled to leave her bed and was incapable of leaving her house for weeks after sobbing while giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 inquiry in January 2024.
She needed professional counselling for the first time in her life and said she was in ‘a bad state’, although insisted she did not need to be hospitalised.
In further developments following two high-profile media interviews and new extracts of her upcoming memoirs:
– The ex-SNP leader said she will not be rushing into new relationships but wouldn’t rule out dating a woman.
– She admitted for the first time that she might have been wiser to ‘take a step back’ on her controversial gender reforms rather than to ‘dig my heels in’.
– She revealed that she is considering leaving Scotland for London, a city she says she has ‘always loved’.
– After her arrest she hid from media in the north-east coast in what she describes as ‘the worst week of her life’.
In her upcoming autobiography Frankly, Ms Sturgeon recounts crying during her evidence to the UK Covid-19 inquiry and reveals that in the aftermath she came ‘perilously close’ to a breakdown as she couldn’t stop crying for weeks, struggled to leave her bed and was incapable of leaving the house.
She said: ‘The inquiry just felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back..’
Ms Sturgeon had repeatedly broken down in tears as she accounted for her decisions during the January 2024 all-day evidence session at the Covid-19 inquiry, when she said she is ‘deeply sorry’ to those who lost loved ones and admitted that if she could turn the clock back she would do ‘different things’ to protect care home residents.
In an interview with the Sunday Times magazine, she said she needed professional counselling for the first time in her life in the aftermath of the appearance at the inquiry.
She said: ‘I’m from the west of Scotland. We don’t do things like that! Working-class west of Scotland, Ayrshire, my God, I would never have. And I suppose part of me would have worried that people would have thought, if I did, that I wasn’t up to the job.’
Asked if she might have gone into hospital when she fell apart if she ‘had not been Nicola Sturgeon’, she said: ‘No, I don’t think I was ready to be hospitalised. I’m not sure how it would have been described clinically. I was not suicidal. But I was definitely in a bad state.’
She said the therapy she received ‘didn’t cure everything’ but it ‘brought back my sense of perspective and equilibrium’ and ‘just gave me the ability to talk it through’.
Earlier this year, Ms Sturgeon announced that she and Mr Murrell, who was arrested and charged as part of the police probe into the SNP’s funding and finances, had decided to end their marriage.
In the Sunday Times interview, she said that ‘I don’t think you can just not love somebody’ after so long together and confirmed that divorce proceedings have not yet begun, while he still lives in their marital home ‘and I come and go’.
‘But we are absolutely going to be divorced,’ she said. ‘Our relationship is over.’
In the first extract of her memoirs last Friday, Ms Sturgeon said that she had never considered sexuality, including her own, to be binary.
In an interview with ITV News, to be broadcast tonight (MON), she was asked by Julie Etchingham whether we might see her in a relationship with a woman.
Ms Sturgeon replied: ‘I’m just out of a marriage, so I’m not rushing into a relationship with anyone, anytime soon. I’m enjoying being my own person for a while.’
Ms Etchingham said: ‘But not ruling it out?’
Ms Sturgeon replied: ‘I’m not contemplating, sort of anything of that nature. I’m just enjoying life.’
In both her interviews, Ms Sturgeon indicated she now accepts she could have changed her approach to her controversial gender reforms, which proposed removing the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria from those obtaining a gender recognition certificate and lowering the minimum age to 16.
She told the Sunday Times: ‘As I look back now, I can see that it might have been wiser to take a step back than to dig my heels in.’
In the ITV News interview, she said: ‘I didn’t anticipate as much as I should, or engage as much as I should, on some of the concerns that might then be triggered.
‘At the point I knew it was becoming, or felt it becoming, as polarized I should have said, ‘Right, okay, let’s pause, let’s take a step back’.
‘I fervently believe that the rights of women and the interests of trans people are not irreconcilable at all. I should have taken a step back and said, ‘How do we achieve this?’.’
Ms Sturgeon also revealed that when she was released without charges from a police station following her arrest, she lay across the back seat of a friend’s car with her hoodie pulled over her head and was taken to a hideaway on the north-east coast – saying it ‘would have broken me’ if she had been found by the media.
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: ‘If Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir was simply a chronicle of her achievements as First Minister it would be a short read.
‘Unsurprisingly this book does not implore readers to judge Nicola Sturgeon on her record on education.
‘Frankly, no one has squandered as much political opportunity as badly as Nicola Sturgeon.
‘Remarkably her memory of events seems to be returning, as she appeared to suffer from amnesia when she was before the parliamentary inquiry into the handling of sexual harassment complaints against the former First Minister, Alex Salmond.
‘As a result of her dismal lack of delivery in office, Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy will be defined instead by political division and personal drama.’