Sturgeon’s tell-all memoir may be a great work (of fiction)

Suggested titles for Nicola Sturgeon’s “deeply personal and revealing” memoir, to be published in 2025, range from the politely sceptical “Wrong Walk to Freedom” to the possibly actionable “Mein Kampfervan”.

The news this week that the former Scottish first minister is to spill the beans for a reported £1 million, after a bidding war won by Pan Macmillan, has been greeted with much mirth north and south of the border.

Sturgeon, who announced her surprise resignation in February, may still take herself seriously but few others do.

Her decline and fall (another potential title) have been swift this year, with her exit from the political scene followed by her arrest and the arrest earlier of her husband and former party chief executive Peter Murrell, and of Colin Beattie, the former party treasurer, over fraud and embezzlement allegations.

No charges have yet been brought in the ongoing police investigation and Sturgeon denies any wrongdoing. But to say the jury is still out on her probity is something of an understatement and it is open season on her.

Former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said of her forthcoming tome: “I imagine she is leaving the final chapter blank for now. And with a rumoured six-figure advance she can finally buy the motorhome she has always wanted.”

That campervan again, it just won’t go away. And nor should it until the public, and SNP donors, are given an explanation of the provenance of the £110,000 vehicle seized by police from outside Murrell’s 92-year-old mother’s home in Dunfermline in April.

Sturgeon has always asked voters to suspend disbelief and for most of her nearly nine years in power they did just that.

Her success is undisputed in terms of winning elections – two in Scotland under her leadership and Nationalist domination of Scottish seats in three Westminster contests.

But her electoral triumphs belie her actual achievements, which are notable by their absence. Even her one-time cheerleaders in the press now find it hard to be generous.

The Scotsman leader on Thursday read: “Sturgeon promised to be ‘frank about my regrets’. She should, we suggest, have many: disappointing her own supporters over independence, presiding over the NHS’s decline, failing to close the educational attainment gap, failing to act as drug-deaths soared, botched ferry contracts, to name but a few.”

Some of her fiercest critics are in her own party, most vociferously former SNP health minister Alex Neil. He has questioned her version of events leading up to her resignation, saying her husband’s imminent arrest must have been a factor.

“Everybody and their granny knew about this investigation,” said Neil when Sturgeon denied the police probe had sparked her departure.

Stretching credulity in politics is par for the course but Sturgeon’s recent behaviour suggests she has completely lost touch with reality.

Not so long ago, she gave an almost credible impression of a stateswoman (junior league) with her eye on future prestige appointments, perhaps in the UN.

Now her reputation is in tatters, the images of forensic teams searching her Glasgow home seared into the public consciousness, her lavish expenses under the microscope and the rumour mill about mysterious purchases going into overdrive.

The memoir will be her legacy project but she must be the only person who still believes in her legend, as she solemnly promises to “chronicle key events of the past three decades of Scottish and British politics and take the reader behind the scenes to describe how it felt to be ‘in the room’.”

Self-delusion aside, how is she going to remember what happened when she was in office, given her apparently appalling recall of recent history?

She may have already forgotten, but during the Holyrood inquiry into the Scottish government’s handling of harassment complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond, she famously suffered severe memory lapses.

Her appearance before the parliamentary committee was hailed as a masterclass in evasion, with the then first minister forgetting her story more than 100 times.

When grilled over what she knew and when regarding the allegations against her former mentor – who was acquitted on charges of sexual misconduct and attempted rape in a criminal trial – she came up with variations of “I don’t know”, “I can’t recall”, “I don’t remember”, and “I’m not sure”.

Readers of her memoirs will no doubt be agog to see if she manages to retrieve all the significant episodes of her past she has blanked out.

Her fellow politicians, especially those on the committee tasked with quizzing her, will probably take a bit more convincing that the recollections in her memoir are an accurate historical account rather than a display of Sturgeon’s remarkable imaginative talents.

Just over two years ago, after her eight hours of testimony, MSPs described her claims as “unlikely” and said they were incredulous at her “forgetfulness”.  

So, what can we expect as she reveals “more about the person behind the politician”? What will she leave out? Will we believe a word?

Public figures deserve the opportunity to try to rescue their reputations by telling their own tales. Sturgeon has long made it known she is an avid reader and loves a good story, so of course she has a book in her.

“Ever since I was a child, I have harboured an ambition to write,” she said this week. Whether she turns her hand to fact or fiction remains to be seen.

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