Exclusive:Nicola Sturgeon cannot see a female political leader at Holyrood 'anytime soon'
Nicola Sturgeon says she looks around the Scottish Parliament and cannot see another female party leader appointed ‘any time soon’
Nicola Sturgeon has said she cannot see a time in the near future when any Scottish political party will have a female leader.
Ms Sturgeon, who was Scotland’s first female first minister, said it had felt like a “breakthrough” moment when Holyrood’s three largest political parties were led by women.
Now, however, she said she cannot say “with certainty” a woman will lead a party “any time soon”.
The former SNP leader said: “We do have these moments in time such as when I was First Minister and the Tories were led by Ruth Davidson and Labour was led by Kezia Dugdale and that felt like such a breakthrough moment.
“But fast forward a few years, and none of these parties are led by women.
“That's not the issue. The issue is that, if I’m honest, if I look round the Scottish Parliament right now, I can’t really say with any certainty that there will be another female leader any time soon.”
Ms Sturgeon made the remarks at the St Andrew’s Book Festival in London as part of an event to publicise her memoir, Frankly.
Questioned by the broadcaster and Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika on the issue of women in politics, Ms Sturgeon said things are not more “cuddly and nice” with women in charge.
“That not my experience of leadership and I don’t think you can generalise too much but it maybe is a bit more reasoned when women are in charge,” she told the Times Radio host.
“We certainly saw that during covid.
“If women were in charge it would certainly not be perfect but if there was more of us it would be better”.
Professor Dugdale, who was in the audience at the Knightsbridge event, stepped down as Scottish Labour leader and now works at the University of Glasgow.
Ruth Davidson was elevated to the Lords and is now Baroness Davidson of Lunden Links.
Both the Scottish Tories and Scottish Labour have had exclusively male leaders since, as has the SNP.
Kate Forbes, now deputy First Minister but who is standing down at the 2026 Holyrood election to spend more time with her young daughter, ran as SNP leader following Ms Sturgeon’s resignation.
So did Ash Regan, who subsequently defected to Alex Salmond’s Alba party and is now an independent MSP at Holyrood.
Baroness Hazarika asked Ms Sturgeon’s view on Rachel Reeves’s performance at Wednesday’s UK Budget.
Ms Sturgeon also said she was rooting for Rachel Reeves to succeed as the first female Chancellor, despite their political differences.
She said: “The fact there was a women leading the Budget, that should be celebrated but I don’t think it should lead to any complacency, that doesn’t mean women have achieved equal representation.
“I say this knowing I can be quite tribal when it comes to party politics - I am SNP to my core - but I want her to succeed, and that’s party politics not withstanding.”
Asked if she felt sorry for Reeves earlier this year when she was pictured crying in the House of Commons chamber, Ms Sturgeon told the book festival audience she felt “angry on her behalf” rather than sorry.
Ms Sturgeon recalled the moment during her evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry where she “teared up and got a bit emotional”.
Opposition parties accused the former SNP leader of “crocodile tears”, although she subsequently insisted her emotions were genuine.
She told the audience she did not think there should be a situation where political leaders are “encouraged” to cry but nor should we “punish leaders who sometimes get emotional”.
Crying, she added, “says that you care” and that it is normal for issues to “get to you”.
Ms Sturgeon said the reaction from “some quarters” to the Chancellor appearing emotional in the House of Commons made her angry on Ms Reeves’s behalf.
However, she added that she had become “irritated” by an interview Ms Reeves gave the weekend before the budget in which she said criticism of her work as Chancellor was misogyny.
“I got slightly irritated at an interview she was doing the weekend where she started to say that all the criticism she has been getting is the result of misogyny and was mansplaining,” Ms Sturgeon said.
“There's plenty of misogyny and there's lots of mansplaining if you go into politics.
“But when you're in a really senior position, I think you have to be careful that you don't default too quickly to assuming that the criticism is motivated by that, because then you start to sound that a little bit like you're falling into that trap of believing everything because you are a woman.”
Calling the situation “complicated”, Ms Sturgeon added that, even cross-party, there should be solidarity with issues women deal with that men do not.
‘Lost political appetite’
Later in the conversation, Ms Sturgeon recalled feeling that she had “lost her political appetite” around the time she decided to step down as leader of the SNP in 2023.
Her decision to go came as a shock and was accompanied by heated speculation as to the cause of her departure.
The move can around the same time as she and her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, were being investigated by Police Scotland over irregularities in the SNP’s accounts.
Mr Murrell was subsequently charged and has appeared in court in connection with charges of embezzlement while the investigation into Ms Sturgeon was dropped.
After the pandemic, she said: “I lost some of my appetite for this sort of raw political battle.
From dealing with life and death decisions, she added, “to come back and just get into some of the issues that felt really small … I just lost my appetite for it”.
Ms Sturgeon was asked about her handling of the proposed Gender Recognition Reform legislation and the contentious issue of trans rights.
She said Scotland has to move on from what has been an “irrational” discussion of the topic.
Asked if she accepts the recent Supreme Court judgment that ruled “sex” means biological sex and not gender identity, Ms Sturgeon said: “The Supreme Court is the law of the land.
“Politicians make the law and the courts interpret and uphold it.”
However, she expressed concern at the implications of the ruling, in particular recent EHRC guidance on single-sex spaces.
Ms Sturgeon said the EHRC ruling, which states that access to single-sex spaces such as toilets must be based on biological sex, could affect women as well as trans women.
“Anyone who does not fit the template of what a woman should look like can be challenged if the person challenging them is not convinced enough they are a real woman.
“They can then be excluded from that space, which would be terrible trans people, sure, but do you really think this isn’t going to affect all women?”
She added: “If you believe in the rule of law, then you have to accept that is the law.”
However, Ms Sturgeon then said: “If politicians or parliaments don't think that should be the law, politicians can change the law.
“And that is the point that I think we should be thinking about.
“Do we really want what I've just described there? That will be the reality of this.
“Do we really want that to be our reality?”
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