Is she ready to turn her back on politics?
Talk of fostering children. Penning her political memoirs. A soft-soap interview in a glossy magazine. And an endless parade of selfie-promotion at Cop26. All point to Nicola Sturgeon planning a life after leadership...
PERCHED on a tall stool, in a red suit and with her legs neatly crossed, Nicola Sturgeon was in full flow as she explained to Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, exactly what she believed her role was at the Cop26 summit.
‘I feel a big sense of responsibility,’ she said seriously.
‘I’m not directly around the negotiating table but as a leader I want to play my part in making this summit a success.’
And play her part she certainly has. Indeed, for someone with no official role whatsoever in proceedings, Sturgeon has been a particularly busy bee this week, as the world’s leaders met in Glasgow for Cop26, the most important climate change conference that has ever taken place.
On Monday she began proceedings by posing for a photo op with teenage activist Greta Thunberg, before snapping a selfie with a slightly miffed-looking Sir David Attenborough, perhaps unsurprising given he detests having selfies taken.
There have been meetings with the presidents of Malawi and Zambia, and the prime ministers of Vietnam, Bangladesh, Belgium, Iceland and the state of Palestine. There was even time for an awkward elbow bump with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and a brief handshake with the star of the show, US President Joe Biden.
Then there was a meet-up with European Investment Bank president Werner Hoyer, a jointly penned article with UN special envoy and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, chats with the mayors of London and Paris and, well, you get the picture.
In fact, by the end of the week that’s exactly what it looked like. A picture, or perhaps more accurately a perception, of how Nicola Sturgeon wants the world to see her.
Genial. Forward-thinking. Stateswoman-like. Unafraid to answer the big questions and sit down with those that matter, whether they run investment banks or protest outside their schools with handpainted placards.
Indeed, a cynic might say it was one of the most ostentatious exercises in self-promotion in quite some time. Exactly the sort of thing someone, say, on the hunt for a new job might do.
THAT Sturgeon might be in the market for a new job is something that has always been strenuously denied both by her and her aides. And yet in the past week it has been hard not to think that even the woman herself is sending out furious smoke signals.
Last Friday in an interview with Vogue magazine, which included a lavish photoshoot of the First Minister wearing various luxury garments while posing around Bute House – and which reportedly took several hours to photograph – she hinted, for the first time, about a life outside of politics by saying that she was considering fostering children.
‘It’s something my husband and I have only scratched the surface of talking about,’ she explained.
Fostering children? A noble calling indeed. But not one that sits easily with the allconsuming job of running the country. Nor one that this most cautious of politicians would speak about unguardedly without purpose.
She also mentioned penning a memoir, saying that she would ‘like to, and think I probably will, for a period after leaving office, write for a while, even if only for therapy and for myself’.
This is a remarkable seachange for a woman who has always staunchly and repeatedly stated that she has no plans to leave office any time soon, who (albeit limply) still claims to be dedicated to the cause of independence and has even placed a bet on herself still being in office by the time the 2026 Holyrood elections roll around.
And yet watching her press the flesh at Cop26, despite just a week ago stating that she hoped never to shake another man’s hand, one would not have been surprised if she had several copies of a freshly typed CV tucked away in one of her smart ministerial bags, just in case the right opportunity should present itself.
In fact, Sturgeon’s possible exit from Bute House has been the talk of the Holyrood steamie for months, with speculation rife that she may already be plotting her next move. And it is, perhaps, understandable.
She has been First Minister for seven years now, and deputy first minister for seven before that. She has been in government for 14 years, and in Holyrood for 22. At 51 years old, it is almost half her life.
In August she lost her most trusted aide, Liz Lloyd, who was her chief of staff and had been with her since 2015 but who did not return to her job after the Holyrood elections in May, instead taking a leave of absence.
She has now moved to a new role as strategic adviser. For someone who keeps her circle both close and small, her departure will be a huge loss for the First Minister.
The past 18 months have, by Sturgeon’s own admission, included her ‘toughest moments’ in office.
She has steered the country through the pandemic, not always smoothly, taking to the podium day after day to read out case numbers and death tolls and battling serious accusations of mishandling the care homes crisis and covering up the Nike conference outbreak.
She recently described ‘the weight of responsibility’ in making decisions about imposing or lifting restrictions as ‘immense’.
Back in March during the Holyrood Inquiry, Sturgeon was repeatedly hauled over the coals by cross-party colleagues over days of questioning on whether she had misled the Scottish parliament on the Alex Salmond crisis. The inquiry eventually concluded that she had, but not ‘knowingly’, and had not breached the ministerial code.
Had she done so, she would have likely lost her job months ago. That she held on to it by the skin of her teeth, in circumstances that even now remain murky and at the very least humiliating, must have taken its toll.
STURGEON must also, as a woman now in her sixth decade who has worked long hours and most weekends for a huge chunk of her working life, look at some of her former female sparring partners in the chamber with a tinge of envy.
There is Ruth Davidson, now Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links, who stepped down as Scottish Tory leader in August 2019 after the birth of her son. She has talked passionately about the work/life balance she is now able to cultivate away from frontline politics.
And there is Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader now installed in a comfortable job running the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow, with plenty of time for board positions for organisations such as Shelter and music charity Sistema.
Wendy Alexander, another female former Scottish Labour leader, walked away from politics in 2011 in her late forties and has been quietly raising twins and working in academia for the past decade.
Even Theresa May, PM during Sturgeon’s early days as First Minister, is now happily seated on the backbenches with plenty of time for hiking in the Tyrol.
As Sturgeon told Vogue herself: ‘I am the last woman
‘She has looked knackered for a long time, exhausted’
standing.’ And yet while she may indeed be the last woman standing, you get the sense that at this moment in time, the real Nicola Sturgeon is reluctant to stand up.
On the day of the Queen’s state visit to open the Scottish parliament last month, Sturgeon, irked by an interview given by Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross in which he speculated that she would not lead the SNP into the 2026 election and remarked ‘I don’t get the impression she wants to be there’, made an extraordinary bet.
So confident was the First Minister that she would, in fact, still be in the job five years on that not only did she wager £50, but also agreed ‘double or quits’ on who would last longer as the leader of their respective parties.
And yet Ross is far from the only party leader across the chamber from Sturgeon who suspects her heart may no longer be in the job. Last month Alex Cole-Hamilton, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, remarked: ‘She has looked knackered for a long time, she has looked exhausted.
‘I can understand that – she has put in a lot of hours of work in terms of the pandemic, I wouldn’t take that away from her.
‘You’ve got to think that part of her wouldn’t much rather have a nice academic job in America or something, rather than lead that vipers’ nest of a party that she does.’
And therein lies another reason why Sturgeon may want to bow out gracefully. The SNP has never been more deeply divided, with those still rampant for an independence referendum in 2023 frustrated by Sturgeon’s heel dragging, convinced that the indy dream is dying on her watch.
In spring, there were defections to Alex Salmond’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Alba Party, while some disillusioned low-level party members have given up on the SNP entirely.
‘She has a fundamentalist and a gradualist wing of her party that will come to blows when they realise there isn’t going to be an independence referendum in 2023,’ Cole-Hamilton observed.
The party has also become split over controversial issues such as the wrong-headed Gender Recognition Act, and the eyebrow-raising coalition with the Scottish Greens. Sturgeon may still have her fans within the party, but she also has her enemies.
Among them are those who have raised serious questions over the missing £600,000 donated to the SNP, which is, ultimately, run by Sturgeon’s husband, chief executive Peter Murrell. The party promised that the money, raised from independence supporters primarily in 2017, would be ringfenced and spent on another campaign to split the UK.
However, the war chest apparently disappeared from published accounts and several donors complained to police. A number have been interviewed while the party has refunded some donations.
Murrell himself is now expected to be interviewed by the cops, a move which will be highly embarrassing for the couple. So much so, that he has barely been seen in public for months, and was nowhere in sight at Cop26.
There are those who have long wondered at the wisdom of a First Minister married to the chief executive of the party she runs. Perhaps then, there is the sense that for multiple reasons, it may soon be time for them to exit the political stage together.
BUT another thorny question remains: who might replace Sturgeon if she goes? Kate Forbes, the peppy finance secretary who has made something of a splash since taking over from the disgraced Derek Mackay last year, is said to be Sturgeon’s own choice.
But at 31 years old she is still young and rather green, and while she is on top of her finance brief, may struggle to control the increasingly rambunctious party as a whole, having been in the cabinet for less than two years.
Sturgeon’s deputy John Swinney meanwhile, at 57, may have the opposite problem, being seen as a safe, if at times inept, pair of hands who has repeatedly missed the boat when it comes to the top job.
Finally there is Humza Yousaf, the gaffe-prone health secretary, who threw his own hat in the ring back in July when he remarked: ‘I always think that being in government is like being asked to play for your football team, and who wouldn’t want to be the captain at some point in the future? So I would never rule that out.’
While he may be keen, there are those who believe that Sturgeon herself is not a fan.
Either way, it is perhaps understandable that as the vipers’ nest continues to stir, Sturgeon may well be looking for a way out.
This week, while those at Holyrood were left to stew over the ramifications of Sturgeon’s mixed messages, back at Cop26 she was still in full flow.
At a New York Times event to open its Cop26 climate hub on Wednesday night, Sturgeon told a live audience: ‘The science is telling us we’re running out of time. Against that backdrop, we have an obligation to try to raise our ambition as much as we possibly can.’
A statement that could be applied not just to climate change, but to the future of the First Minister herself.
‘A nice academic job, rather than lead that vipers’ nest of a party’