Who is the real Nicola Sturgeon?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There has been a drip feed of stories over the past few days from Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly which hits the shelves this week. In her book, the former First Minister of Scotland covers a slew of topics including SNP infighting and her relationship with the late Alex Salmond, her sexuality and the police probe into SNP finances, and the gender reform bill that contributed to her leaving frontline politics.
Spectator writer and Scottish Daily Mail columnist Euan McColm and Isabel Hardman – who has reviewed the book for this week's Spectator – join Lucy Dunn to discuss. For Euan there is a humility in the prose that he just doesn't recognise in the Sturgeon of real life – is she trying to discover herself?
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I am O'Shee Dunn and today I'm joined by Isabel Hardman |
| 0:09.4 | and spectator-writer and Scottish Daily Mail columnist Ewan McComb. The memoir of Scotland's former |
| 0:14.8 | First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has already hit bookshelves a few days ahead of its planned publication date |
| 0:19.7 | and the book titled frankly is |
| 0:21.7 | causing quite a stir. The former SNP leader is trying to dispel long-held assertions about her |
| 0:26.9 | and take back the narrative after the events of the two years following her resignation, namely the |
| 0:31.8 | infighting that took hold of the SNP and the Operation Branch Form Police probe into SNP funds and finances |
| 0:36.9 | that saw her arrested, investigated and finally cleared. |
| 0:41.8 | Isabelle, you've had the pleasure of reviewing Sturgeon's memoir for the spectator, and your article will be in this week's magazine. |
| 0:47.1 | Do you feel like you now know the real Nicola Sturgeon? |
| 0:50.6 | I think it's really striking how keen she is to introduce who she sees as the real Nicola Sturgeon. |
| 0:58.7 | And really to sort of say, the woman you've all been reacting to over the past two decades and longer, |
| 1:07.5 | isn't the real Nicola Sturgeon, is just an outfit. |
| 1:10.4 | And she says that she put this outfit on when she was first a candidate, |
| 1:15.1 | still in her very early 20s, still a student finishing her final degree, |
| 1:19.7 | a final year of her degree at Glasgow University. |
| 1:22.9 | And she wanted to look the part. |
| 1:25.6 | And I think a lot of women in politics do understand that, particularly of her generation, trying to look the part. And I think a lot of women in politics do understand that sort of, |
| 1:29.2 | particularly her generation, trying to look the part, putting on a sort of, I think she actually |
| 1:34.0 | describes them as lump and suits, becoming quite sort of austere, basically trying to look like |
| 1:41.3 | a middle-aged man so that people don't pay you as much attention and see you as being credible. And the real Nicola Sturgeon underneath this, this |
| 1:49.8 | initially lumpen suit, although she talks about how her suits became sharper and more |
... |
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