Nicola Sturgeon was born in the North Ayrshire town of Irvine in 1970. She became an SNP member at the tender age of 16, having been inspired by a high-ranking female politician – but not in the way you might think. Sturgeon was educated at Greenwood Academy. She studied law at the University of Glasgow where she graduated with LLB (Hons) and holds a Diploma in legal practice.
She was raised in a critical era, as she explains to BBC Radio Four’s Women’s Hour: “Thatcher was prime minister, the economy wasn’t in great shape, lots of people around me were looking at a life or an immediate future of unemployment and I think that certainly gave me a strong sense of social justice and, at that stage, a strong feeling that it was wrong for Scotland to be governed by a Tory government that we hadn’t elected.”
She was persuaded by the argument that that nation would only truly prosper with independence.
At the age of 29, she was elected to the new Holyrood Parliament in 1999 as a Glasgow regional MSP. In the early days of her presence in parliament, Ms Sturgeon had a reputation for being too serious – which partly earned her the title “nippy sweetie” – but friends and rivals alike are at pains to point out her lighter side. Recalling Ms Sturgeon in her 20s, Ms Fiona Hyslop from the SNP says: “She was always quite guarded, to make sure that she didn’t do or say anything that perhaps would cause difficulty later. So she was always, in that sense, very sensible – but good fun.”
The work paid off with the SNP’s 2007 election win, when Ms Sturgeon became Scotland’s deputy first minister and health secretary.
She began as health secretary by seeing through popular SNP pledges, like reversing A&E closures and scrapping prescription charges. Later, she was thrust into the international public eye during the global swine flu crisis, giving regular and incisive press briefings and updates after the first UK cases were confirmed in Scotland, becoming a fixture on 24-hour news channels.
Her time at the top end of Scottish politics quickly became characterised by electoral success, with Ms Sturgeon spearheading the SNP campaign as the party won an unprecedented majority at Holyrood in 2011. She later described the result – and the dismantling of Labour strongholds across the country – as having broken the mould of Scottish politics, and put the SNP’s success down to being “in touch with the country it served.”
Some five years after taking on the health brief, Ms Sturgeon accepted one of the Scottish Government’s biggest roles as the “Yes Minister” overseeing the independence referendum.
After her first Holyrood victory as first minister, Ms Sturgeon outlined education as the number one priority of her government. She stressed that she wanted to be first minister for the whole country, not just the SNP and Yes side – in effect, to build a political legacy away from the binary question. But for all the debate about the length of a political “generation”, the issue of independence never really came off the agenda. It was still the hot topic of debate and had become a decisive factor at the ballot-box, with Ruth Davidson building a Conservative revival by pitching her party as the defender of the union.
After Brexit, the SNP’s 2016 manifesto (which had her face on the front) had raised the possibility of Scotland taking a fresh look at going its own way if voters north of the border backed Remain, while the UK as a whole voted to Leave the EU.
The version of Brexit that Johnson finally pushed across the finish line on 31 January 2020 was anathema for Sturgeon and deeply unpopular with most Scots, not least those in the fishing and seafood industry who lost their crucial direct access to EU markets. The Brexit vote saw the UK as a whole vote to leave the EU by 52% to 48%. While in Scotland, the split was 62% to 38% in favour of Remain.
Ms Sturgeon is normally characterised as a canny, relatively cautious politician; a thinker, far from the mould of her comparatively gung-ho predecessor at Bute House.
But when it came to Brexit and the chance of what quickly became known as “indyref2”, Ms Sturgeon threw caution to the wind. In terms of her private life, the first minister is married to Peter Murrell – who is also chief executive of the SNP, making them perhaps the ultimate power couple of Scottish politics.
One of the highlights of her work experience was with Salmond, when the pair dominated Scottish politics for more than a decade. They led the campaign for Scotland to become independent from the UK. Alex Salmond was Scotland’s first minister and Scottish National Party leader before Ms Sturgeon, who was his deputy.
But they fall out and the row began when allegations of sexual harassment – strongly denied – were made against Mr Salmond by two female civil servants in 2018. The complaints were made after Ms Sturgeon asked for new government policies on sexual harassment to be put in place in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Mr Salmond believed the policy was aimed at him.
The Scottish government eventually admitted it had acted unlawfully. It had to pay Mr Salmond’s legal fees of more than £500,000. Mr Salmond has accused officials close to Ms Sturgeon – including her husband Peter Murrell, the SNP’s chief executive – of plotting against him. They have all denied these claims. In January 2019, however, Mr Salmond was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, including attempted rape.
He has since claimed there was a “deliberate, prolonged, malicious and concerted effort” from some in the Scottish Government and leading SNP figures to damage him and even have him sent to prison. Ms Sturgeon has accused him of peddling false conspiracy theories and suggested her predecessor is angry because she “did not collude with him” to make the sexual harassment allegations “go away”.
Conclusion
Nicola Sturgeon is Scotland’s first female first minister and the first woman to lead any of the devolved UK administrations. Meanwhile, it seems that she is really a woman of the family as inspired by her mom and considers her marriage to Peter the happiest time of her life. The moral corruption and family problems faced by the British royal family, Johnson and other London politicians have increased distrust among the people of Scotland and Ireland versus emerging leaders like Nicola Sturgeon or Michelle O’Neill with new thoughts, clean hands, and the opportunity to influence and find political positions.
