NICOLA Sturgeon thought about “disappearing into the North Sea” after her arrest as part of a probe into the SNP’s finances.
In an excerpt of her memoir, Frankly, published by The Times, the former first minister of Scotland spoke about some of the hardest moments of her life, as well as conflicted feelings over motherhood and sexuality.
Being arrested and questioned by the police following the arrest of her former husband Peter Murrell and the Scottish National Party (SNP) treasurer Colin Beattie was the “worst day of my life”, she wrote.
Police also investigated Sturgeon and Beattie but they were later exonerated. The arrests, Sturgeon said, made her feel like she “had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel”.
She said she barely slept during the period leading up to her arrest and would wake with her stomach in knots.
After she was questioned, she went to visit a friend in the north-east of Scotland for a week to escape the media glare.
She wrote: “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.”
Sturgeon said she carried a sense of “dread and anxiety” for a year until April 2024, when Murrell was re-arrested and charged.
The probe into Sturgeon continued and she admitted she was frightened about the investigation, even though she knew she had “done nothing wrong”. She said: “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 highprofile criminal investigation for almost two years, especially having committed no crime, was like a form of mental torture.”
Sturgeon wrote of an “overwhelming” sense of relief and release upon being told in March that she would face no further action.
She also wrote about her miscarriage in 2010, saying she went to work in January while she was in “constant agony”, including a memorial event for the 40th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster.
She addresses rumours that she had a “lesbian affair” around 2020 with Catherine Colonna, who was the French ambassador to the UK at the time and false rumours about her issuing a super-injunction to silence the press.
She concludes: “While the fact I was being lied about got under my skin, the nature of the insult itself was water off a duck’s back.
“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.”
Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon will be published on Thursday.
