Nicola Sturgeon memoir describes arrest as ‘worst day of my life’

Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has described her arrest by police investigating the SNP’s funds because the worst day of her life.

Sturgeon describes being questioned by detectives as a part of Operation Branchform in an extract from her upcoming memoir which has been printed in The Occasions.

Sturgeon additionally writes about her “utter disbelief” about police raiding the house she shared together with her husband Peter Murrell in April 2023.

Elsewhere within the extracts, the previous SNP chief describes the ache of struggling a miscarriage and units out her views on sexuality, which she says she doesn’t contemplate “to be binary”.

Sturgeon writes that she was in mattress when her husband answered the door to cops round 07:00 on 5 April 2023.

“It was with a way of utter disbelief that I realised the police had been in my house, that that they had a warrant to arrest my husband and search the home,” she writes.

“I used to be in despair, struggling to understand what had occurred.”

Sturgeon was arrested in June 2023. She was instructed in March this yr that she would face no additional motion and was not a suspect.

Her husband, the previous SNP chief govt Peter Murrell, was charged with embezzlement in April 2024.

The couple introduced they had been separating earlier this yr.

Sturgeon stated that in the course of the interval between the raid on their house in April 2023 and her arrest she felt like she “had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel.”

When she was arrested, she was: “Horrified and devastated, although additionally relieved in an odd kind of method. Not less than the ordeal of ready was over.

“Sunday, June 11, was the worst day of my life. Being arrested and questioned by the police is an expertise I am undecided I’ll ever recover from.

“Once I finally left the police station, late that afternoon, I used to be in a foul state mentally. I went to a good friend’s home within the northeast of Scotland and stayed for per week.”

She stated the day when she was knowledgeable that no motion could be taken in opposition to her, a day on which Mr Murrell appeared once more in court docket, was “a day of deeply combined feelings.”

“The sensation of reduction, and launch, was overwhelming,” she writes.

Sturgeon additionally talks intimately about her expertise of turning into pregnant and struggling a miscarriage aged 40 in 2010.

She stated she had by no means yearned for a child however her husband desperately wished to be a dad.

When she came upon she was pregnant, she writes, “Peter was ecstatic. I wished to be. I instructed him I used to be. However — and I nonetheless really feel so responsible about this — I used to be deeply conflicted.

“In my silly, work-obsessed thoughts the timing could not have been worse. By the Scottish election, I might be six months pregnant. It could appear laborious to consider now, however even in 2010 it wasn’t apparent how voters would react to a closely pregnant candidate,” she writes.

Sturgeon writes concerning the guilt she felt at being conflicted concerning the being pregnant and the guilt she now feels after miscarrying.

“Later, what I might really feel most responsible about had been the times I had wished I wasn’t pregnant. There’s nonetheless part of me that sees what occurred as my punishment for that,” she writes.

She additionally describes persevering with to work whereas struggling “fixed agony, probably the most excruciating ache I’ve ever skilled” and feeling “heartbroken” concerning the loss.

Sturgeon says that she was satisfied the newborn would have been a woman referred to as Isla, writing: “I do deeply remorse not getting the prospect to be Isla’s mum.

“It may not make sense, however she feels actual to me. And I do know that I’ll mourn her for the remainder of my life.”

The previous first minister additionally addresses rumours about her sexuality, particularly an unfounded declare that she was having an affair with a feminine French diplomat.

“There have been barely totally different variations of the story, however the constant theme gave the impression to be that I used to be having a torrid lesbian affair,” she writes.

“In one of many variants of the story, there had been a violent encounter between us, involving an iron, in Edinburgh’s Balmoral Lodge. We had additionally supposedly arrange a love nest, in a home in Bridge of Allan, that I had purchased from Andy Murray’s mum, Judy.”

Sturgeon writes that she would usually have ignored such “wild tales from the darker recesses of social media,” however this one ended up being mentioned by her neighbours, household and buddies.

She describes a lot of the social media and on-line remark as being pushed by homophobia.

“For a lot of of these peddling it, “lesbian” and “homosexual” are meant as insults. Nonetheless, whereas the actual fact I used to be being lied about obtained beneath my pores and skin, the character of the insult itself was water off a duck’s again,” she writes.

“Lengthy-term relationships with males have accounted for greater than thirty years of my life, however I’ve by no means thought-about sexuality, my very own included, to be binary. Furthermore, sexual relationships ought to be personal issues.”

Frankly will probably be printed on Thursday 14 August.