'Suffocating': Nicola Sturgeon considering move to London to avoid 'goldfish bowl scrutiny'
The former first minister says she sometimes feel she ‘can’t breathe’ due to the media scrutiny in Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon hints at moving to London, saying she feels like she is under “goldfish bowl scrutiny” in Scotland.
The former first minister has spoken about feeling like she “can’t breathe” in Scotland and feels it would be beneficial to “remove” herself from the country temporarily.
Ms Sturgeon made the remarks on the BBC Newscast podcast, where she was being interviewed to mark the publication of her memoir ‘Frankly’.
During her interview, she was asked if she could ever imagine herself living abroad after she steps down from Holyrood in 2026.
She said: “I mean not forever and possibly not for very long.
“I belong in Scotland, it’s my home, but I think being physically out of Scotland for a period might just help to reset my perspective and to be more selfish about it, just remove me a little bit from that kind of goldfish bowl scrutiny that I still live under in Scotland.
“I don’t mean that as a complaint, it’s just the reality that Scotland is quite a small country and it’s quite a small body politic and sometimes I just have to breathe the wrong way and somebody’s writing a story about it.”
After stepping down as first minister in 2023, Ms Sturgeon began taking driving lessons which were filmed by television cameras. She spoke of this experience in the podcast and added: “It does sometimes feel very, what’s the word I’m looking for, suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes like I can’t breathe freely in Scotland.
“So maybe not abroad, but you know England, I love London and England is not yet a foreign country, would never be a foreign country obviously, even when we’re independent.”
The Glasgow Southside MSP said she is “spending a reasonable amount of time” in London at the moment, and likes being in the UK capital as she is able to “please myself”.
She said she now wants to concentrate on “building and shaping a life that makes me happy”.
During her podcast interview she was asked if it is now impossible to be a world leader in any capacity due to the growing strains it puts individuals like her under.
Ms Sturgeon said: “I hope we don’t get there, but I do worry that’s where we are headed.
“I really worry particularly for younger women who just see politics as ‘why would I put myself through some of this?’
“I really worry that the state of democracy and discourse, all the things we’ve been sort of touching on, is as such right now that anybody who would be in politics for the right reasons thinks ‘that’s not for me’ and pulls back.
“As that happens, we basically just free up the ground for all the wrong people, the people who actually thrive on that kind of discourse, so yeah I do think that’s where we’re heading.”
Ms Sturgeon’s memoir ‘Frankly’ is officially released at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Thursday, but is already being sold in bookshops across the country.
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