Nicola Sturgeon: I still miss Alex Salmond 'in some way'
The former first minister says she was hit by a ‘wave of grief’ when her former mentor Alex Salmond died.
Nicola Sturgeon says she still misses her predecessor and mentor Alex Salmond “in some way”.
In an exclusive interview with ITV News, Ms Sturgeon says she misses the relationship the pair used to have, and was hit by a “wave of grief” when he died in October last year.
Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond formed one of the most successful political partnerships the UK has ever seen - however this broke down after sexual misconduct allegations against the latter emerged.
Mr Salmond was eventually cleared of 13 charges, including attempted rape, at the Edinburgh High Court in 2020.
Speaking to ITV News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham, Ms Sturgeon said: “Even today I still miss him in some way, the person that I used to know and the relationship we used to have.
“But I thought I had made my peace with it, that I’d got to a point where I felt nothing.
“And then I got a call to tell me that Alex Salmond had died. I started crying on the phone and I just was hit by this wave of grief … and it was complicated because obviously we weren’t just no longer friends, we were political enemies.
“There was no prospect I was going to be able to go to his funeral or anything like that and it was a kind of strange, strange feeling.”
Since leaving the SNP, Mr Salmond frequently criticised the nationalists and his successor Ms Sturgeon. In 2021 he went on to create the rival pro-independence Alba Party.
He died of a heart attack in North Macedonia at the age of 69 last year.
Ms Sturgeon said: “At the point he died, I hadn’t spoken to him for years.
“I felt really deeply the loss of the relationship with him. I suddenly didn’t have him, he wasn’t there, I couldn’t talk to him, and I went through this period of I would still talk to him in my head.
“I would have vivid dreams that we were still on good terms, and then I’d have this feeling of such sadness when I remembered the reality.
“So I went through that process. I still missed him in some bizarre way.”
Extracts from her memoir ‘Frankly’ have been published over the weekend in The Times and The Sunday Times, where Ms Sturgeon said Mr Salmond “would have rather destroyed the SNP than see it succeed without him”.
Ms Sturgeon later denied the existence of a conspiracy to destroy Mr Salmond.
In her memoir, which is officially released at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Thursday, Ms Sturgeon also describes Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as an “odious” man.
When asked about this by ITV News, the Glasgow Southside MSP 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.
“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, and it just felt this kind of bravado and just not very pleasant.”
‘Nicola Sturgeon: The Interview’ will be broadcast at 7pm on STV this evening and an extended version of the interview will be available on ITVX in the following days.
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