LONDON — Former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed Nigel Farage was “odious” and had a “very, very fragile ego.”
Speaking to ITV News to promote her forthcoming memoir, Frankly, an account of serving in frontline Scottish politics for two decades, the ex-Scottish National Party leader said Reform UK leader and MP Farage was not comfortable to be around.
Asked why Sturgeon described Farage as “odious” in the book, she said: “This is my impression, other people might have a different view of him. He just comes across as somebody who’s got a very, very fragile ego. Somebody who’s not particularly comfortable, particularly around women.”
The Reform UK leader has made efforts to increase the party’s support among women after all five of its MPs elected last year were male. The party’s first female MP, Sarah Pochin, was elected in May after winning a by-election against Labour.
Sturgeon, who led the SNP while Farage headed up the right-wing party, UKIP, in the 2010s, said: “In the 2015 leaders’ debate just before we went on air that night, I just remember hearing him tell somebody how much he’d had to drink, in the green room area beforehand.”
She added: “It just felt this kind of bravado and just not very pleasant.”
The former SNP bigwig, who led her party and governed Scotland for nearly eight and a half years, also spoke about her home being raided by police and getting arrested in 2023 during an investigation into the party’s finances.
“It wasn’t until I got to mum and dad’s that I saw the pictures of my house looking like a murder scene, effectively,” Sturgeon told ITV about the police raid, where her now estranged husband and former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell was arrested. “I had this sense of horror and upset and the kind of shame of it all.”
Sturgeon also said attending a police station for questioning was “horrific,” adding “part of me just closed down.” Police Scotland confirmed she was no longer a suspect in March while Murrell was charged with embezzlement.
Sturgeon, who has served as an MSP since the Scottish parliament’s founding in 1999, will not stand for re-election at next May’s Holyrood elections.
Reform UK did not respond to a request for comment.
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