Full interview with Nicola Sturgeon

Inequality was at the heart of the referendum debate and it quite naturally spawned a whole range of women-led groups and initiatives, particularly from the Yes camp, which will not simply go away.

Women for Independence, in particular, has grown into a formidable campaigning force and with many within its ranks having so eloquently and movingly described the experience as a sisterly reawakening of female solidarity, it seems apt that regardless of the 18 September result, a woman is now running Scotland.

I sit down with Sturgeon just after her second FMQs as the leader of her party and of the country. She seems remarkably relaxed, unfazed even.

It had been just the second outing for her and her opposite number in the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, Kezia Dugdale, in the weekly bear pit that is FMQs. Having certainly landed a blow on the SNP the week before by questioning the inaction of the Scottish Government on the looming oil crisis, Dugdale this time went for another topic close to the FM’s heart: the NHS. On this she fared less well.

Unfortunately for Dugdale [and potentially for the current Health Secretary, Shona Robison, as time goes on] no one quite knows the health brief as well as Sturgeon. The FM, quite visibly, couldn’t believe her luck when Dugdale completed a long list of what she saw as failings by the SNP-led administration to tackle what she saw as an emergency in the Scottish health service by asking the former Cabinet Secretary for Health how she would currently describe its current state.

It was an unwitting invitation for Sturgeon to simply make a speech about the SNP’s record in government on the NHS and to heap praise on the hardworking doctors and nurses within it. Job done.

Even Dugdale’s well-prepared line – that while Sturgeon’s reference to Labour’s years in charge of the NHS “might comfort the SNP backbenches but will not comfort those who slept on a trolley last night” – failed to land a serious blow.

So while FMQs had previously become a lesson in obfuscation as Salmond used the opportunity to outflank the opposition with bluff and bluster, Sturgeon knows policy better than he and is determined to show it.

'I think you can have all the experience as a deputy in the world but I don’t think anything ever completely prepares you for stepping into the top job'

After all, she spent five years running health, the largest department in the Scottish Government, during which time she calmly oversaw the country’s response to swine flu which propelled her onto the front pages and television screens across the UK, before spending two years as Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Cities and Investment, as well as steering through the Edinburgh Agreement and paving the way for the eventual referendum.

Salmond, on the other hand, despite all his political experience and prowess, has never run a government department other than that of First Minister.

And with Scotland at a tipping point, the referendum having given us a taste for a different future, either with or without independence, what Scotland needs now is a leader who can measure up to the task of bringing a nation back together and finding some consensus for change. 

And with that rebirth of a nation, it seems appropriate that it is a woman who leads that charge. In accepting the role of First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, a working-class woman from Ayrshire, referred to her eight-year-old niece sitting in the public gallery with Sturgeon’s mother, Joan, the SNP Lady Provost of North Ayrshire Council and Sturgeon’s younger sister, Gillian, who works in the FM’s beloved NHS, and said she hoped her appointment sent a strong and positive message to girls across our lands – that there should be no limit to their ambition or what they can achieve.

“If you are good enough and if you work hard enough,” she said, “the sky is the limit – and no glass ceiling should ever stop you from achieving your dreams.”

These were heartfelt words and gave succour to those who believe the issue of gender equality needs to be ramped up a notch and that quotas need to be embedded within law. No one can deny that Sturgeon has achieved high office through anything other than merit.

But she brings realpolitik to the role of First Minister, so while her predecessor was an impressive and sometimes divisive figure, whose skills as an artful tactician stood him and his party in good stead on the road to the referendum, it is now up to Sturgeon to capture the mood of a nation and govern for all.

She has put poverty and inequality at the heart of her programme of government and shown by example on gender by creating a 50/50 split cabinet of men and women. Asked whether she sacrificed good male talent from the cabinet table to simply get the arithmetic on equality to add up, she told me that her problem was having too much talent to choose from. 

“Every single member of my cabinet is there on merit and it amuses me – and I’ll stick with ‘amuse’ for the moment but you could take another view of it – that I did get the odd email after the cabinet appointments saying it can’t be a cabinet on merit because you’ve got 50/50 men and women and what they were really implying was the 50 per cent women were there not on merit. Nobody emailed to say there are 50 per cent men in your cabinet so it obviously isn’t on merit.

“Equality means a huge amount to me, gender equality in particular means a huge amount to me, and while I can’t change everything as First Minister, I made a decision before I was in the job formally that I was going to use the fact of being the first woman First Minister to make as much change, or try to influence as much change, as I can. I can’t look to other people to make that change if I’m not prepared to make it myself.”

Strategically, Sturgeon knows that putting gender equality at the core of her policymaking is a good move politically. She is acutely aware that women have become the shock absorbers of austerity; that low pay, zero-hours contracts, part-time work and the prohibitive costs of childcare mean many women can’t afford to work at all. 

She knows that women have paid a far higher price, proportionately, than men for the so-called welfare reforms and that with more women than men working in the public sector, they are also doubly hurt by the cuts in public service spending and with more still to come. She also knows that gender inequality became a touchstone for a political awakening during the referendum year and if now is not the time to enshrine equality, then when?

'I had a great chat with Jack McConnell a couple of weeks ago and took his perspective because, after all, he’s a former First Minister so he knows what it’s like to sit in this chair'

Salmond changed the course of Scottish history because without him there would not have been that referendum. But Sturgeon has the opportunity to make that history matter. To make sure that all wee lassies like her niece look at her and know that anything is possible, not by accident but by design. 

She is a much more instinctive politician than Salmond. She has an acute emotional intelligence that he doesn’t have and, while both want independence, she has a far clearer vision of the kind of socially-just Scotland she wants to create and also how to get there.

So when Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, warned her party conference that Nicola Sturgeon would take the SNP lurching to the ‘left’, it was not a description that unduly upset the then FM in waiting.

But she also knows she has a job to do to convince big business that ultimately rejected independence that they have nothing to fear from the SNP. She is quick to emphasise that, as a social democrat, she accepts that tackling inequality requires creating a strong economy. It will be important which part of that equation is writ bold.

A clue to that was in her first speech to business as First Minister when she announced the retention of the government’s Council of Economic Advisors – set up by Salmond to advise on how to make Scotland more economically competitive – but with a twist.

Joining the team of world acclaimed economists, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, is one Sir Harry Burns, the former Chief Medical Officer and a man who has spent a lifetime arguing for the need to tackle inequality in the quest to create a better, healthier, and more just Scotland. He is Sturgeon’s man from the Council.

Sturgeon is making her own mark. She is most definitely her own woman and she will be a very different First Minister to the man who has mentored her for all her political career. I ask her if she has consciously thought how to approach it.

“I was very conscious of not becoming obsessed by being different to Alex and very much letting what makes me different to Alex show itself over time because I think it’s always a mistake to define yourself by who you are not, as opposed to allowing people to see who you are. 

“I suppose the things I was conscious of most though, which was nothing to do with Alex but from drawing on my experiences as Deputy First Minister, was not assuming for a second that the step up to First Minister wouldn’t be anything other than big and significant because it is.

"I think you can have all the experience as a deputy in the world but I don’t think anything ever completely prepares you for stepping into the top job. Suddenly you have got nobody else above you so you can’t just say I don’t want to make this decision let somebody else make it. That can feel quite scary, no matter how senior you have been before.

'There is part of my brain that thinks I’m still 18, but when you are First Minister you can’t give into that part of your brain very often'

“I was also conscious, following on from my first point, of being myself, to avoid the danger of trying to be what the media expects me to be and I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, over the years that the most important thing you can do is be yourself, follow your instincts and learn to trust your own instincts. Sometimes you will get it wrong but hopefully more often than not you will get it right.

“In some respects, I guess it’s the same in any walk of life where someone goes from being in a deputy role or a role where they had a boss into being the boss, that there are lots of things you do in the deputy position that prepare you and that you draw on in terms of experience but it’s different once you are there.

"It’s different in a way that’s actually quite difficult to put into words, but I suppose the manifestation of it is the first time you are faced with a decision that might be a bit difficult or uncomfortable and you think ‘there’s no one else that can do this’. And sure you can ask people their opinion and you can take advice but ultimately it’s your decision and the buck stops with you.

"I suppose that is the moment that you stop and realise ‘oh my goodness, this is down to just me’. But look, I’m in the top job and it’s exhilarating and it’s fantastic but anybody who says it isn’t also slightly terrifying is not being entirely truthful with you.”

I ask her what that first moment was and she looks slightly and uncharacteristically uncomfortable.

“I can’t actually remember. I mean, there have been a few moments… actually, I do remember but I’m not going to get into it because that would be unfair… In fact, I remember it very well, actually, but I think it would elevate that decision above other decisions and it’s not that that decision was that bit more difficult or more important than others, it was just it was the first time that I had that feeling of ‘gosh, it’s down to just me’.

"There have been others since so I am just using it to illustrate the moment you realise the difference between being deputy and being leader. What it was about is not that important.”

It’s an interesting moment of enforced reticence from Sturgeon, of an unfamiliar formality between us. A reluctance perhaps on Sturgeon’s part to expose herself as being more fragile than she would like to project.

She’s not normally so circumspect with me and despite my cajoling refuses to go further. I don’t pursue it because I suspect the decision itself was not all that important and I sense it’s just a stage in her journey to being the kind of First Minister she wants to be. She’s feeling her way and conscious that she doesn’t need to give a running commentary of how that feels. This is, after all, a grown-up job.

Anyway, it’s a fleeting moment of discomfort and we are soon exploring the question of whether she has ever run around Bute House in her pyjamas shouting ‘I’m First Minister’… The answer, by the way, is ‘no’.

“Putting aside the question of whether I have run around Bute House in my pyjamas, Mandy, which I have not, I think, like many people our age [she’s actually 44 and a good seven years younger than me but I’ll take that], there is part of my brain that thinks I’m still 18, but when you are First Minister you can’t give into that part of your brain very often.

"Yes, there’s a big sense of responsibility, that’s not new for me in the sense of having been in government and any job carries with it a big responsibility, but being First Minister of the country is a massive responsibility and not a day goes by when I’m not aware of that and frankly, there should never be a day when I’m not aware of that. But yes, doing this job, you do realise that undeniably you are a grown-up.”

Within weeks of Sturgeon becoming First Minister she had to deal with the tragedy of the Glasgow bin lorry crash and the news that the Scottish nurse, Pauline Cafferkey, had contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone. I remark that in a world where politicians are so aware of their public persona and often frightened to show real emotion – never mind do ordinary things like eat a bacon roll – Sturgeon is always very natural even in difficult circumstances. 

'I’m in the top job and it’s exhilarating and it’s fantastic but anybody who says it isn’t also slightly terrifying is not being entirely truthful with you'

“I’ve been First Minister for a very short space of time and there’s no doubt that some of the most difficult days have been over the last couple of weeks, with the crash in Glasgow and the Ebola situation.

"But you know, with the crash in Glasgow, I’m pretty sure that the instant I heard the news I reacted in the same way as every other Glaswegian or any other person who knew somebody in Glasgow or elsewhere. I reacted with shock, horror, and I knew my husband was Christmas shopping in the centre of Glasgow at that very moment. I also know that’s roughly where he parks the car and so I had what everyone had – that moment of ‘oh my god, could this be one of my loved ones?’

"I think that just manifests itself in how you react to these things and while obviously I am conscious of the fact that I have a duty to try to articulate for those people who are not standing in front of a camera how they feel, as well as how the nation feels, these are horrible times for anybody and I feel it as much as anyone.

“If I ever get to a point in this job where I am scared to show human emotion, I think I will give it up because that’s the point where you are absolutely not being yourself and it is critically important to me that I remain ‘me’. Now as a politician, you have to on many occasions keep your human emotions under check in a way that is about representing the nation particularly in times of tragedy, but politicians are human beings and we share the same reactions to these things as anybody else does. I think we should be forgiven for showing how we feel.”

Sturgeon is determined to not let the role of First Minister curtail her from living a normal life.

She and her husband, Peter Murrell, the chief executive of the SNP, continue to live in their neat, modern Glasgow house more often than in the Georgian splendour of Bute House, the official residence in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square, although she has made some small interior design changes by moving furniture, introducing more paintings of women, and shocking the staff by being the first First Minister to ask the whereabouts of an iron and a Hoover – she says, for Peter to use!

“I’m determined to live as normal a life as I can,” she says. “I clearly recognise there are changes being First Minister brings to your way of life as well as to your work environment and to the kinds of decisions you make in your day-to-day life but I’m making a conscious effort.

"I went Christmas shopping on my own and while these things for anyone reading this will sound bizarre – what do you mean you can’t go Christmas shopping on your own – a lot of folk would say you shouldn’t do that and for some good reasons too and they will tell you why you should be more careful about what you do, etc but going Christmas shopping is one of the things I like doing and while going down Buchanan Street takes longer now because you get to stop and talk to lots of people and take lots of selfies, that’s one of the lovely things about it. I’m determined to live my life as far as I can the way I lived it before I became First Minister.”

One vital part of that ‘normality’ is her continued use of her own Twitter account. Sturgeon was one of the first politicians to really embrace the value of Twitter, ensuring she struck a balance between the political and the personal. She has been tweeting since 2010 and has over 116,000 followers. I ask her what rule she tweets by. Who sits on her shoulder whispering ‘no’?

“Me, usually, and what I hope I apply is common sense most of the time. Since the day I first went onto Twitter I have applied a couple of very basic rules and so far it has mainly kept me out of trouble.

"The first rule is, don’t say anything on Twitter that you wouldn’t stand in front of a television camera and say. I think that’s the mistake a lot of politicians make, they forget it is public and because there’s a feeling of privacy about it, they treat it as if they are talking to a pal in the pub.

"That is the first rule I’ve applied and the second is don’t do it after you’ve had a glass of wine. 

“Some politicians just don’t get social media, frankly. There are lots of them, too many to name, in all parliaments across the world, where they routinely tweet press releases. Social media, for any politician of course, it’s partly about self-promotion, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. But if you want to engage with people it has to be more than that.

'I’m determined to live as normal a life as I can'

"The most responses I get on Twitter are when I tweet about things that are not about politics. I tweeted a picture of myself and my niece on Hogmanay at her request and for the next couple of hours she was agog at how many retweets she was getting. You’ll note she was getting. These personal insights that make the politician more whole are what get people much more engaged than just shunting out the press releases and the official comments. Why shouldn’t people know you a bit more as a person?”

I ask her about Salmond now he is no longer her boss. He has not only taken up tweeting – hashtag #sexysocialdemocracy – but has taken to writing ‘green ink’ letters to newspapers and being less than discreet about how he views certain members of the media and others. He is also commanding headlines with his ambitions for a return to Westminster and grandiose plans for coalition. Is he causing her problems?

“No, not at all. Again, something that amuses me when I read a lot of the commentary on how my relationship with Alex will work over the next period is that it is all very much through a prism of how Westminster politics has been conducted in terms of competition and rivalry.

"Alex and I are not in competition – we are the same team and we are on the same side. So the idea that I will somehow be threatened if Alex’s getting a lot of attention or he’ll be threatened if I’m getting a lot of attention is just rubbish.

"I’ve had no difficulty at all with Alex since he stepped down and I don’t expect to. I have worked with Alex for 20 years, more than 20 years, we know each other inside out. We are perfectly capable of having arguments when we don’t agree behind closed doors, then we agree to differ and then we present a united front.

“If I’ve got an issue with anything Alex says then the first person I tell is Alex but that’s not been the case and he is somebody that I will never feel backward at going to for advice and I hope he will never feel backward at giving me advice – and if I feel the need, I’ll give him advice.

“My immediate sources of advice and support will always be those closest to me; Peter, my mum, my sister, my dad and of course Alex will always be a source of advice.

"John [Swinney] too, in terms of within government, is indispensable and I hope he doesn’t mind me saying it, but I had a great chat with Jack McConnell a couple of weeks ago and took his perspective because, after all, he’s a former First Minister so he knows what it’s like to sit in this chair.

"He’s not of my party, obviously, so it’s a different kind of perspective but welcome all the same. Some of the best advice I get, and not just since becoming FM, is from members of the public. And very often it is what they say to you that impacts on you most because they are seeing it outside the bubble, they’re seeing it as anybody else sees it and telling you as it is. I like that.”

With just three months to go until the General Election, Sturgeon sits pretty with impressive polling predictions for the SNP taking seats from Labour but she also has a new combative Scottish leader in Jim Murphy and an overwhelming feeling that all the political parties and the media are basically talking up a message of ‘anything but the SNP’. How does that feel?

“I take a lot of strength and encouragement from it. When you’ve been in politics as long as I have, the worst thing is when nobody is talking about you. I remember in my early days in the SNP when Alex was first leader, the biggest challenge we had was to get noticed, to get covered, to get talked about.

"To be in the position now where everybody is chasing us – Labour and the Tories joining arms to try and oppose the SNP – that is a sign of our strength and our success.

"My challenge is not to worry about what other people are saying, it’s to keep the SNP doing the job it’s elected to do well, retaining the trust of people, continuing to perform as well as I think we have as a government since 2007 and if I concentrate on doing that then the others will continue to have to chase us.”

Doesn’t she feel that Jim Murphy has done a good job in his first few weeks in not only dominating the headlines but in setting the political agenda? His announcement that Labour would create an extra 1,000 nurses, paid from the Mansion Tax mainly collected in London, put him on the right side of the NHS debate and showed he was standing up for Scotland.

And secondly, in highlighting the oil crisis and announcing that Labour would set up a resilience fund to help communities like Aberdeen in times of economic difficulty, he exposed the SNP’s central argument for independence based on the price of oil. Isn’t he framing the debate?

“No. His announcement about 1,000 nurses wasn’t about nurses or the health service at all. Even members of his own party call it a cynical attempt to buy votes.

"I think if you are going to engage in a cynical attempt to buy votes, you should be at least less transparent about it. It’s not about the health service that announcement, it’s about an attempt to pretend that Labour somehow stands up for Scotland. An attempt to make people forget they spent the last couple of years in partnership with the Tories to hold Scotland back. I don’t think that will wash at all.

“And with the North Sea situation, there is work there that the Scottish Government can do and we are doing. Our responsibilities lie around support for skills in the sector, support for jobs and innovation and while the oil price is obviously important, there’s a big imperative in the industry to innovate, to be efficient, and we are doing what we can to support innovation, helping with exports and with internationalisation because a lot of success in that sector is in export.

"The biggest difference that can be made for the oil and gas sector right now is the fiscal regime and we’ve had warm words and vague intentions from the UK Government that now have to be defined and implemented quickly. That’s what the sector will tell you they need – a more attractive and a more conducive fiscal environment to work in.

“Of course we should help any sector and any company as far as we can in any part of the country that is dealing with economic difficulties, that was our whole approach during the recession and in our economic recovery plan.

"But frankly, I think it’s a bit rich to hear politicians who have been in government who didn’t set up an oil fund to now that they are in opposition call for what is effectively an oil fund to be set up. Jim Murphy was in government for a good few years.

'We’ve earned the strong position we are in and my job is to keep us there but not for its own sake, but because I think we are doing the right thing for Scotland' 

"I’m sure we could add up a fairly significant sum of money the last Labour government took in from oil and gas revenues and yet I didn’t hear on any occasion for an oil and gas resilience fund to be set up when he had the actual power to do it.

“Look, Jim Murphy’s argument boils down to this: ‘vote Labour to keep the Tories out’ and it does border on insulting people’s intelligence. In 2010 that was Labour’s argument, and Scotland, by and large, did vote Labour and we got the Tories in and the same was true in 1979 and 1983, 1987 and 1992.

"The fact is, if enough people in England vote Tory then experience tells us it doesn’t matter how we vote in Scotland, that’s the government we get. If you are in that scenario, the last thing you need are Labour MPs that go down to Westminster and are barely heard from or worse, go into partnership with the Tories as they did in the referendum campaign. What you need are MPs that are going to be there first, last and on every occasion fighting Scotland’s corner and that is only from SNP MPs.

“Jim Murphy is the leader of the opposition in Scotland so I will treat that with the respect the position deserves. But honestly, if I ever get into the position where I spend as much or more time thinking about what the opposition is doing than doing the job I’m elected to do, which is govern the country, then I will worry. 

“My job is to keep the SNP doing the right things and we are in a very strong position just now. We’ve earned the strong position we are in and my job is to keep us there but not for its own sake, but because I think we are doing the right thing for Scotland.

"It’s not always easy, there are always things you wish you could do but you can’t or you wish you could do more of that and you can’t, and we have some very difficult conditions to grapple with, not least the financial position we have been in for the last few years and thanks to Jim Murphy’s party and the Tories we will continue to be in, but my job is to make sure that throughout all of that, we in the SNP are doing the best job for Scotland that we can.”

And is independence now off the agenda for the foreseeable future?

“I will always argue the case for Scotland to be independent but we are not going to become independent as a result of the next Westminster election. The route to independence is through a referendum and to have a referendum we need a party, presumably the SNP, to get a mandate for that in a Scottish Parliament election. I’m very clear that’s the route to independence.

"The Westminster election is not going to deliver independence but I’ve argued for independence all my life and I will continue to do that. But having more SNP MPs at Westminster gives us a chance to force the promised powers into reality.

"Why were more powers promised? Because the Westminster parties got the shock of their life in the referendum campaign. They promised those extra powers in order to try to stop people voting Yes and if people just go back to voting for these parties, then they’ll think they’ve been let off the hook and it will be business as usual and I can guarantee you at the very least those promises will be watered down.

"The only way to make sure that we carry on that sense of empowerment and forward momentum that we got during the referendum is to vote SNP, it’s pretty simple.

“And that’s the incredible thing about what happened last year, that sense of empowerment, and that wasn’t down to the SNP, frankly, or any other party – that was down to people power. That’s what changed in Scotland, suddenly that when push comes to shove and in the final analysis, people are in control. 

“People got a taste for that, even people who voted No got a taste for that, and they don’t want to go back the way. The Westminster election is the first opportunity to say as a country, that we are not going back to how it used to be, to a time when the politicians just did what they wanted. It’s time for Scots to show that they are in control.”