ALEX Salmond did not read the Scottish Government’s white paper on independence ahead of the 2014 referendum, Nicola Sturgeon has claimed.
In an interview with ITV ahead of the publication of her memoir Frankly, the former SNP leader claimed that Salmond had left her feeling “cold fury” after declining to engage on the document on which she had led.
Produced by the SNP Government in 2013, “Scotland’s Future” was a 670-page white paper outlining “what being independent can deliver for Scotland and it is why the Scottish Government believes the people of Scotland, individually and collectively, will be better off with independence”.
Speaking about overseeing the writing and publication of the white paper, Sturgeon told ITV: “I remember an evening which I just suddenly had this overwhelming sense of impossibility: ‘I can't get this to the point it needs to be at. It's so unwieldy. It's so difficult’.
“I just remember having what I can only describe as a panic attack. I was sobbing on the floor of my office at home and just my heart was racing.”
ITV News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham then asked if it was at this point that Salmond, then first minister, had been showing “very little interest” in the Scotland’s Future document.
Sturgeon said: “He really didn't engage in the work of the drafting or the compilation of the white paper at all. He was the leader, he was the first minister, and he hadn't read it.
She went on: “He hadn't read it. He'd maybe read bits – I don't even know if he'd read bits of it.
“He told me he was going on a trade mission to China. I don't think I'd ever felt as much cold fury at him as I did in that moment.
“It just seemed to me like an abdication of responsibility.”
Sturgeon’s claims were rejected by former Salmond aide and close ally Chris McEleny.
“I don’t think there’s a single version of ‘Scotland’s Future’ in the country that hasn’t been autographed by Alex Salmond!” he said.
“The suggestion that he wasn’t aware of the detail is laughable, he had spent several years guiding SNP policy to form the basis of a credible case for independence on the back of having ran the most competent government in the history of Scotland.”
ITV's full Sturgeon interview is due to be broadcast on Monday, August 11. Her memoir Frankly is due to be published on Thursday, August 14.
Ahead of the book’s release, extracts have been published in the media, with ITV also releasing clips of their interview with the former first minister.
In clips published earlier on Monday, Sturgeon said that she still misses Salmond – who died from a sudden heart attack in October 2024 – and that she had been hit with a “wave of grief” after his passing.
However, she also sparked anger from Salmond’s allies after writing in her memoir that she suspected Salmond may have been behind the press learning of the sexual misconduct probe against him in 2018.
Elsewhere, Sturgeon has made headlines by saying that she should have “paused” the Scottish Government’s gender reform legislation – which would have made it easier for trans people to change their legal gender.
Amid the controversy surrounding the bill, rapist Isla Bryson came into the public eye after being put into a women’s prison.
Asked about Bryson, Sturgeon told ITV: “Isla Bryson identified as a woman. I think what I would say now is anybody who commits the most heinous male crime against women probably forfeits the right to be the gender of their choice.”
Asked why she doesn’t call Bryson a “biological male”, Sturgeon said: “They are a biological male but that's about whether … it gets back into the self ID thing.
“I should have been much more straightforward, I wasn't, but that's because of the debate. We'd lost all sense of rationality in this debate. I'm partly responsible for that.”
