Mandy Rhodes interviews Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon and finds her refreshingly honest about her own health, wellbeing and political ambitions
With the boss out of the country on important First Ministerial business in Sri Lanka – it’s a hard job but someone has to do it - Nicola Sturgeon is back in the driving seat at the Scottish Parliament. in the three years before Alex Salmond returned to Holyrood from Westminster as leader of the party, Sturgeon had weekly fought her corner during FMQs against then First Minister Jack McConnell with all the tenacity of a Rottweiler on heat...well, I think that’s the gist of what they called her!
Today she faced her old adversary during First Minister’s Questions and was surprisingly gracious. But then Jack McConnell is now relegated to the opposition back benches and Ms Sturgeon is leading the Government in Salmond’s absence. Revenge is, as they say, a dish best served cold and it was with baited breath that the Chamber watched as she turned from her position at the front to face Mr McConnell, now sitting at the very back. However, she grinned broadly and enthusiastically acknowledged his part in Glasgow’s battle to bring the Commonwealth Games to Scotland in 2014, and thanked him for not using the opportunity as a backbencher to settle past scores. He was visibly moved by the gesture but then she could afford to be gracious because the real battle that day was between her and the new Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, and it was really no contest.
The press box was full and standing as Sturgeon in white and Alexander in red squared up to a fight that many would have paid money to watch. Time and time again, Alexander used her once a week opportunity in the Chamber to quiz the SNP Deputy Leader about whether her party was failing to meet its pledges on the numbers of police pounding the beat. But all she managed to achieve was a perfervid beating from the MSP for Govan, who said the experience reminded her of Groundhog Day and offered a piece of friendly advice to the lady in red – ‘learn a lesson, hen, don’t waste your time messing with me’. I paraphrase, of course, but you get the drift.
So for one week only, the Chamber became the lionesses’ den, with Sturgeon and Alexander hissing and a-spitting. But then what would you really expect? here we have two parties diametrically opposed in their beliefs about how Scotland should constitutionally develop and now with the unionist party ousted from power by the party of separation, the schism in Scottish politics is red raw. This is not just a polite crack in the political landscape, it is a chasm neither Sturgeon nor Alexander is willing to shake hands over, never mind cross. The still grieving Labour MSPs do little to hide their contempt for a party that they disregarded in opposition as a party of one dimension, minority interest and that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever seizing power…oops!
It would now require a complete bouleversement in philosophy, a rewriting of political history and a nod from her London-based bosses, for Ms Alexander to actually welcome the new SNP Government as the natural party of power, let alone support it in its fundamental aim of unshackling the Scots from the yoke of English rule. So heavy political theorising aside, Ms Alexander flounced, pursed her bee-stung lips and sat down in her seat instead, scowling under her fringe and leaning into Andy Kerr for support, as her nemesis metaphorically slaughtered her with a grin and carefully chosen words that twisted the knife ever so gently; reminding the new leader, yet again, that Labour had lost an election, that she now sat on the opposition benches and that she was still the new girl in the job. “I will give Wendy Alexander some friendly advice. I spent some time asking the questions from where she now sits. One lesson that I learned early on was that when someone gets the answer to their first question the first time they ask it, they should think of a new question rather than keep asking the same one.’ Subtext being; ‘Wendy, let’s see you use that big brain now.’
Ouch! God, if looks could kill…but a bit like celebrity wrestling, is the FMQs joustabout all mouth and trousers and the fighting just an act?
“There is a bit of that,” says Sturgeon, “But it’s not entirely a performance. I mean, obviously, you’ve got a responsibility, you’re giving answers to questions and you’ve got a responsibility to give answers to questions because of holding the Government to account and it’s part of how Parliament gets its information about what the Government’s up to, so it’s a serious part of the parliamentary programme and we all take it seriously. But I think, particularly that bit of the parliamentary week, there is a bit of theatre about it, there always has been and there always should be because it’s the part of Parliament that people see most so it should be entertaining as well as discharge its serious business.
“How does it feel? I defy anybody to say you don’t feel nervous before doing that, and I think the moment you don’t feel nervous is the moment you should decide to do something else but once you get started and the adrenaline kicks in, it is good fun.”
Fun and Nicola Sturgeon aren’t necessarily words that you would expect to see in one sentence. She has been portrayed as a nippie sweetie, a bit too serious and a shade aggressive. But she would largely reject the description. She says she is much softer than people expect and says that the media make certain assumptions about women that are involved in the business of politics that aren’t true.
To illustrate, she says that despite how it looks in FMQs, she feels no personal animosity towards Jack McConnell or indeed Wendy Alexander. In fact, she says, she feels empathy for them, even sympathy. But Sturgeon’s words are a bit like licking a sharp knife dipped in honey…sweet but with a hidden edge.
“Firstly, I can empathise with them because I’ve been there and I’ve been, as we all have in the SNP, through many elections where we’ve lost and had to come to terms with that and it’s not easy so I do empathise with them and I know what they are going through.
“It must be really difficult for Jack and again, I can understand that. He was First Minster for five years; he did some good things, the smoking ban, for instance. What I said today, I meant; his contribution to the Commonwealth Games bid was huge and he does deserve a lot of credit for that. So it must be very difficult for him and I feel a bit sorry for him, although he was the leader and he has to take responsibility. But he fought a campaign that was decided for him and I suppose you could say, and I would say to some extent, more fool him. He should have acted like a leader and decided for himself how the campaign was going to be run but he didn’t and I think he is paying the price for it now.
“However, I think Labour needs to sort itself out a bit. It strikes me that they are still in denial about the election
I think Labour needs to sort itself out a bit. It strikes me that they are still in denial about the election 
. It’s a different kind of denial, they started out basically thinking the SNP didn’t really win the election, that it was just some kind of wee statistical fluke. I think they have moved on from that and they now seem to think that the SNP won the election but it was all a fraud because they said all these things that weren’t true. Labour haven’t yet gotten to the stage of saying that they lost the election because people voted against them and it was actually to do with them as a party, and I think that’s where they need to get to if they are going to work out where to go from here.”
Failure at the polling booth is something that Sturgeon, in common with most of her SNP colleagues, knows all about. She says that in her day – she joined the party when she was just 16 in 1987 – you didn’t join up with the expectation of winning. She campaigned for Kay Ullrich, the former SNP candidate for Cunninghame South during the 1987 General Election – Ullrich staggered in at fourth place and then when Sturgeon was 21, she stood herself in Shettleston in 1992 and got beaten. Being trounced has been, until recent times, an occupational hazard of being a Nat, which is perhaps what gives them their inner strength now they are in power.
“I think you have to believe in what you are doing. I have believed in this party since the first day I was involved in politics and I believe it as strongly now as I did then
I think you have to believe in what you are doing. I have believed in this party since the first day I was involved in politics and I believe it as strongly now as I did then
. I’ll preface this by saying that all politicians in all parties should be in politics for the right reasons. Occasionally, you do see people for whom it is a career option and it’s for self-advancement and I think that’s the worst thing because the biggest ballast against the brick bats in politics is the fact that you are there because you genuinely believe you are there to make a difference and you believe in what you are doing. So what, you take the odd knock, but what you are doing is much bigger than that, so that’s what enables you to pick yourself up and dust yourself down and get on with it.”
At 37, Sturgeon has spent more of her life involved in politics than not. She has clearly had to grow up in a very public fashion where in such a fickle world people remember more about her last haircut than her last policy statement. And when image is all important, perhaps inexperience and youth meant she had to construct a façade that many saw as frosty and unapproachable, just to survive the personal slings and arrows and intense interest in a young woman in politics. But as she grows up and into herself, she is undeniably a much softer woman who is happy to answer anything that is thrown at her, which is a real contrast to other politicians who are so caught up in spin, that they have forgotten that being honest is actually an attribute.
She says that the ‘nippie sweetie’ label was actually pinned on her by a trade union leader from Govan, who meant it as a compliment for “a lassie that would fight her corner”. So how would she describe herself?
“Oh, I am passionate about what I do, I believe in what I do and I am quite driven but I am much more centred than people probably would think. Family is incredibly important to me and I am much softer than perhaps my public image would suggest.
“if you are serious and driven as a politician, as a woman politician that is, that can be chalked up as a negative bit of your personality but with a man, it’s just that they are serious, they have gravitas and determination. It’s an unequal world in terms of how people are perceived.
“You just have to let it wash over you at the end of the day, something that is said one day is old news by the next day and I think that is something that you appreciate more the longer you are in politics. You let it go and you rely on family, and friends around you, who know you for who you are and therefore, know that some things that are written about you are nonsense. These people bring perspective to what is sometimes an unreal situation.”
Sturgeon comes from what she describes as a very ordinary Scottish family from Ayrshire. Her father was an electrician and her mother was a housewife, although now an SNP councillor. She has one sister who is five years younger and works as a phlebotomist – ‘something to do with blood’ – in the NHS. It was a new town upbringing that was remarkably unremarkable, except for one thing – Margaret Thatcher was in power.
“My politics were borne out of a feeling of injustice – the injustice I felt we had as a nation. The injustice that, I think, a lot of people felt in Scotland during the Thatcher years. Being walked all over and not listened to. It was in the days, as well, when Labour was starting to journey away from being Labour and becoming New Labour and I wasn’t particularly enamoured by them.”
What does she think of Gordon Brown’s recent meeting with Thatcher at No. 10?
“It’s absurd. I think it’s particularly absurd for a Scottish Prime Minister to be quoting Thatcher in the way that he is. I don’t mean this personally, I mean Thatcher is an elderly lady and I don’t want to make any personal comments but she was abhorred in Scotland. She was everything Scotland isn’t. She offended some of our deepest values and we couldn’t wait to get rid of her, and to see Gordon Brown who was part of that, who was just as anti-her as we all were, cosy up to her on the steps of Downing Street, it just makes him look less of a politician.
“I suspect he thinks it plays well to a particular audience, in a particular part of England and that’s understandable, he is trying to be elected across the country and the photo call happened when he still thought he was going to be having a general election in a few weeks, so it was all about that. But it’s like Gordon Brown is almost split in two a lot of the time. He said that his favourite goal was Paul Gascoigne against Scotland, he needs to think about how that makes him sound, that kind of comment, and I think that Thatcher thing is the same. In England, I am pretty sure, it must really make him look really insincere unless he really believes it and in Scotland, it makes him look plain daft.”
It’s a rare flash of raw emotion that gives you a sense of what Sturgeon is really about. Far from being the cool ice maiden that many see her as, her politics are grounded in hair-bristling passion. In an effort to portray herself as less abrasive, she may have tempered some of that emotion and that’s a shame because it is that that separates her from many of her contemporaries both north and south of the Border who have made the business of politics a business rather than a conviction.
“Part of the changes I feel I have gone through are part of the changes people go through anyway as people get older. But yeah, changing roles and taking on more responsibility, becoming Deputy Leader and being leader in here while Alex was still in Westminster, was a big responsibility. I have had to become something bigger than just me. You’re leading a team and you’ve got to think about that, you’ve got to be a team player and you’ve got to worry about what other people are doing and how it all reflects on the party. That changes you; it makes you more tolerant and makes you more aware of people and it makes you much more conscious of how you are being judged.
“Yes, image matters and it would be a stupid politician who didn’t think about it but it would be an equally stupid politician who thought too much about it.”
Did she feel in any way usurped when Salmond came back to lead the party in the Scottish Parliament as First Minister?
“I’ve been asked this question loads of times, so much so, that I start to think that maybe I should feel aggrieved but you know, you’ve interviewed us together and you know the background to this. We made a decision in summer 2004 that we were going to do this joint leadership thing and the plan from day one was for us to win the election and for him to become First Minister. That was the plan, so I don’t feel an ounce of regret about that, the plan worked, we delivered it how it was meant to be.”
Does she wish she was First Minister?
“Not yet.”
But unlike John Swinney, unless he is being disingenuous about it, being First Minister isn’t something she would rule out?
“Of course not and there is not a disingenuous bone in John Swinney’s body.
I don’t rule it out but does that mean I lie awake at night planning? No, but it’s a possibility and I have always taken the view, maybe it’s the kind of Scottish work ethic in me, that you focus on what you’re doing now because if you don’t and you make a mess of it, then frankly, any future ambitions are pretty hypothetical. I am very much a do what I am doing here and now person, and let what will happen, happen.”
For now, Sturgeon seems quite genuinely happy to be doing the job she is doing and let’s face it, trying to reverse Scotland’s appalling health record is a fairly monumental task. “I’m providing the strategic leadership for the NHS but I am also responsible, and I think this is the big change that I think is most exciting, for the things that determine people’s health - housing, poverty, emotional wellbeing, all that kind of thing, which makes it easier for me to make a bigger difference because you are not just dealing with the symptoms of people’s ill health, although that’s important. I’ve got an opportunity to try and change things for the long term.”
Clearly her predecessor can boast the smoking ban as his legacy, what does she hope to leave behind?
“Short term, I still think people wait far too long for hospital treatment and I still think people end up in hospital when they could be treated in their own homes and in the community, so I want to see much shorter waiting times and more community-based health services. Longer term is about trying to break that cycle, that inter-generation cycle of ill-health we have in Scotland and so that is about building on work like the smoking ban and doing more to tackle alcohol issues. Smoking was the big health issue of the last Parliament, alcohol is that equivalent, this time around.
“It’s not as easy as it is with smoking. The message with smoking is easy, give up. In alcohol, it’s more complex because you’re not saying give up, there is nothing wrong with enjoying alcohol, it’s the misuse of alcohol that’s the problem and therefore, it’s a steeper hill to climb. We’ve got to look in the mirror and think about what it is we drink each week, as part of the norm. I think that’s the hardest nut to crack. You talk about alcohol abuse and most people don’t think it applies to them but it applies, probably, to more people than any of us know and I include myself in this, although obviously, I have become a bit more aware in the last few months about what is a unit of alcohol. How many are in what you’re drinking? How many is it safe to drink? And I think that basic educational process would make people just more informed and I think if they are more informed, they are able to make decisions for themselves that are a bit more healthy.”
How does she approach her own health?
“I probably don’t do as much as I should do but I have always been a reasonably healthy eater and to be honest, that’s a challenge in this job. Ironically, I find it harder since I’ve become health Minister to stick to my healthy eating, just because of the pace of life. I don’t do as much exercise as I should do and I am probably in the same boat as most of the population, I’m trying to exercise more and be more aware of alcohol.”
Has she ever smoked?
“No, not really. I dabbled when I was younger, like most people, but I was lucky and it never took hold.”
What about cannabis?
“Yes, once I did and it made me sick, I really didn’t like it.”
What about diet? Sturgeon has noticeably lost a considerable amount of weight over the last few years. Was this a conscious decision?
“It was. I can’t remember when but I just completely changed my whole diet and everything. I did a detox programme and then just kind of kept going with some of the basic principles, like cutting down on certain types of food, carbohydrates, just eating much more fruit and veg and trying to be more responsible with alcohol.”
What about avoiding stress? How does she relax?
“Increasingly these days, by shutting the front door and having a glass of wine – but not too many glasses of wine obviously – and watching something really mindless on telly, like the X Factor.”
And does she hear her biological clock ticking?
“Well, I’ve said I haven’t ruled it out but I’ve not said I am definitely going to do it.”
And with that very human health checklist almost over, she laughingly suggests I phone her partner of four years, chief executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, and ask him what he thinks about the baby question. “He’s already said he would stay at home,” she laughs. “See what he says.”
And that’s the overriding impression one gets about Nicola Sturgeon – that despite appearances, she is entirely open, entirely human and she doesn’t take herself too seriously. You ask her a question and she answers it honestly, and there’s something really rather healthy about that.
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