Nicola Sturgeon has opened up about the “mental torture” of being investigated by police in her new book.
Frankly, which will be published on Thursday, also details her miscarriage in 2010 and rumours about an affair with a female French ambassador to the UK.
In an excerpt published in The Times, Ms Sturgeon, 55, describes 11 June 2023 – the day she was arrested and questioned by police – as the “worst of my life”.
The former first minister was investigated after her ex-husband Peter Murrell, the former chief executive and treasurer of the Scottish National Party (SNP), was arrested and charged with embezzlement.
The couple’s house was searched as the police probed £660,000 that had gone missing from party accounts, but the investigation into Ms Sturgeon and her colleague Colin Beatie was eventually dropped.
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Having gone to the north east of Scotland to stay with a friend during that time, she recalls: “I spent hours looking out across the North Sea. At first, I wanted to somehow disappear into its vastness. Slowly but surely, though, the sea calmed me.”
The following year was filled with “dread and anxiety”, she says, with no updates on the case, until Mr Murrell was re-arrested and charged in April 2024.
“I retain both faith in and respect for our country’s criminal justice system. However, none of that changes this fact: being the subject of a high-profile criminal investigation for almost two years, especially having committed no crime, was like a form of mental torture,” she says.
She was told she would face no further action on 20 March 2025 – a month after she and Mr Murrell announced their separation.
Went to work despite miscarriage ‘agony’
The memoir also details a miscarriage she suffered in 2010. She returned back to work straight after, having to attend a memorial event despite being in “constant agony”.
She says she felt “conflicted” about becoming a parent – but only realised “belatedly” that she “wanted to be pregnant” when she was in hospital having an urgent scan after telling a flu jab nurse she had noticed spots of blood.
The loss of the pregnancy was confirmed four days later on 4 January 2011.
“I had the presence of mind to call Peter into the bathroom and, together, we flushed our ‘baby’ down the toilet. We later resolved to try again, but I knew then that we had lost our one chance,” she recalls.
Ms Sturgeon, who served as first minister between 2014 and 2023, also addressed false rumours that she had a lesbian affair with former French ambassador to the UK Catherine Colonna in 2020.
While the lies “got under her skin”, she adds: “Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than 30 years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters.”
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