LIZ Truss only really wanted to talk about how she could land an interview with Vogue magazine when she and Nicola Sturgeon met at COP26, the First Minister has said.
Speaking at an Edinburgh Fringe event alongside political commentator Iain Dale, the SNP leader recalled meeting the prospective future prime minister at the global climate conference in Glasgow in 2021.
At the Edinburgh Fringe show with Nicola Sturgeon. Laughs in the audience as she says she almost misses having Theresa May as PM, describing Boris Johnson’s time in office as ‘one long bluster’ pic.twitter.com/LSHVQBkbA6
— Xander (@xanderescribe) August 10, 2022
“I remember it quite well actually,” Sturgeon told the audience. “I had just done, and this is going to sound really up myself but I don’t mean to … I’d just been interviewed by Vogue, as you do, and that was the main thing she wanted to talk to me about.
“She wanted to know how she could get into Vogue – and she calls me an attention seeker!”
The First Minister went on: “I said to her, well they came and asked me, and I didn’t want to make her jealous but I remember saying to her it actually hadn’t been my first time in Vogue.
“She looked as if she’d swallowed a wasp.
“I remember we were at this climate change conference in Glasgow, world leaders about to arrive, and that [getting into Vogue] was the main topic of conversation that she was interested in pursuing. Once we’d exhausted that, it kind of dried up.”
Sturgeon added: “I’m sure we’ll have many more conversations about many more substantial things.”
Alongside former chancellor Rishi Sunak, Truss is one of only two contenders left in the race to replace Boris Johnson in No 10.
Asked if it had crossed her mind that Truss could be prime minister within the year when meeting her at COP26, Sturgeon replied: “I didn’t stand there and think ‘oh my god she’s brilliant she must be PM’, trust me, I didn’t think that.”
The First Minister was further questioned on the Foreign Secretary’s claims, made at a Tory leadership hustings in Exeter earlier in August, that “the best thing to do with Nicola Sturgeon is ignore her”.
Asked if the comments had made her “angry”, Sturgeon said: “This is my first reaction to a lot of what I hear coming out of the Tory leadership election, I thought it was a spoof, I thought it was made up.”
However, the SNP leader said when she realised the comments were real they had “kind of made me angry for Scotland”.
“Some people will like me as a politician, others will loathe me, but I am the democratically elected First Minister of Scotland.
“When you say that I should be ignored then effectively you are saying that Scotland’s democratic choices and preferences should be ignored, that Scotland should be ignored, and we’ve heard that for too long and too often from the Tories. It’s not good enough.
“Scotland will not be ignored, certainly while I am the First Minister.”
The First Minister also addressed her working relationship with Boris Johnson during her appearance at the Fringe.
Saying that the outgoing Prime Minister's time in office had been "one long bluster", Sturgeon added that working with him had been like "nothing I've ever dealt with before" from other senior politicians.
Truss's leadership campaign has been approached for comment.
