Nicola Sturgeon has said she has faith that police were justified in putting a forensic tent in her front garden while searching her home, in her first full interview since she and her husband were arrested as part of the investigation into the SNP’s finances.
The former first minister also used a wide-ranging interview with the broadcaster Iain Dale to categorically rule out any reconciliation with her predecessor, Alex Salmond, who took her government to court for its handling of sexual harassment allegations against him. The dramatic rift between the pair has resulted in festering internal divisions in the party.
Prompted by Salmond’s own response – “never say never” – to a similar question from Dale when he interviewed him on Tuesday, Sturgeon said her feelings came not from a place of anger but “more a place of indifference”.
“Over recent years, he’s revealed himself to be somebody that I don’t want to have in my life and I don’t particularly want to have a relationship with,” she said.
Sturgeon was questioned by Dale at his Edinburgh fringe show about what he described as Police Scotland’s “completely over-the-top” approach during the two-day search of the property where she lives with her husband, the former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.
Describing the events as a “traumatic”, Sturgeon said: “My touchstone all along is that I’m confident in my own position and I’m absolutely certain I’ve done nothing wrong.
“Therefore I need to and do trust in the process. The police are doing a job and I have to have faith that everything they’re doing in the process of that is justified.”
Pressed by Dale as to whether the subsequent arrests were the real reason she resigned as first minister in February, Sturgeon insisted that she had had “no idea of what was about to unfold” until the police knocked on her door on 5 April to arrest her husband.
She revealed that she had returned to her parents’ home while Murrell was being interviewed by police. Asked what effect the police investigation had had on her marriage, she responded: “My marriage is not something anybody should worry about.”
Asked about the performance of her successor, Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon said that she believed he was doing an “excellent” job, and denied that the turmoil resulting from Operation Branchform had overshadowed his early days in office.
Earlier in the week, Yousaf said in his first appearance at the fringe as first minister that he had felt “a little bit” as if he had ended up answering for issues around party transparency that were not his fault.
Asked whether she had regrets about the gender recognition reforms, one of her flagship policies which has been mired in controversy despite being passed by a cross-party majority of the Holyrood chamber, Sturgeon said that she did not believe that support for transgender rights and women’s rights were irreconcilable.
“If I have a regret it’s that I didn’t manage to get more people into what I think is the sensible centre ground,” she said.
At an earlier fringe event on Thursday, Joanna Cherry, a senior SNP MP seen as one of Salmond’s allies within the party, told the audience she believed the SNP’s willingness to debate difficult issues and its tolerance of dissent had grown since Sturgeon and the former Westminster leader Ian Blackford quit.
Cherry, an outspoken opponent of the gender reforms, attacked Sturgeon’s landmark cooperation agreement with the Scottish Greens at Holyrood, which saw the Greens’ co-leaders given ministerial roles, and backed calls from Sturgeon’s critics in the party to either rip up or renegotiate the deal.
Speaking at the Stand – a venue that originally banned her from appearing after a revolt by pro-trans staff members, but which rescinded that after legal warnings – Cherry said she had originally voted against the deal.
“I think the Scottish Greens have become a totalitarian party,” Cherry said. “Some of their parliamentarians have behaved in a disgraceful way towards women. There is a feeling that the tail is wagging the dog.”
