Nicola Sturgeon has described the time she faced criminal investigation over her ex-husband’s alleged fraudulent activities as “like a form of mental torture”.
In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, Frankly, the former first minister of Scotland vividly recounts the despair she felt when police raided their Glasgow home in April 2023 and arrested her partner, Peter Murrell, over misuse of party finances.
Murrell, a former Scottish National party (SNP) chief executive, was initially released but then charged in 2024 with embezzlement in relation to £660,000 of party donations. His case is continuing.
Sturgeon faced police questioning but was never charged and has since been exonerated of all wrongdoing. In March this year, she was told she faced no further action in Police Scotland’s fraud inquiry.
In her book, excerpts of which were published in the Times on Friday, she describes her shock over the police raid in April 2023, the “utter disbelief that … police were in my home, that they had a warrant to arrest my husband and search the house”.
She felt creeping anxiety and dread in the weeks after Murrell’s arrest, waiting for police to question her, and when they did arrest her, she was “horrified and devastated, though also relieved in a strange sort of way.
“At least the ordeal of waiting was over.”
Sturgeon had stepped down from her post just months earlier in February 2023, citing burnout. After her police interview in June, she was released pending investigation and sought refuge at a friend’s home in the north-east of Scotland.
The arrests had made her feel as if she “had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel”. Investigations into her actions as party chief continued for more than a year, and she says she felt frightened despite knowing she had done nothing wrong.
“I retain both faith in and respect for our country’s criminal justice system. However, none of that changes this fact: being the subject of a high-profile criminal investigation for almost two years, especially having committed no crime, was like a form of mental torture.”
She writes that she felt “overwhelming” relief when authorities informed her this year she was no longer a suspect.
The excerpts also offer a window into the veteran politician’s thoughts on parenthood and the deep grief she felt upon having a miscarriage in 2010, at the age of 40. She had never had any great desire to be a parent, and that when she did fall pregnant she was “deeply conflicted” due to her work.
“In my stupid, work-obsessed mind the timing couldn’t have been worse. By the Scottish election, I would be six months pregnant. It may seem hard to believe now, but even in 2010 it wasn’t obvious how voters would react to a heavily pregnant candidate,” she wrote.
But she knew her husband, Peter, would be overjoyed to be a father and he was “ecstatic” to learn the news, she wrote. However, upon telling doctor about noticing “spots of blood”, she had an urgent appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary the following day.
“I think I’d known in my heart what the outcome would be, but I was still hoping for the best,” she wrote. After four days of “constant agony, the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced”, the pregnancy “passed”.
“I had the presence of mind to call Peter into the bathroom and, together, we flushed our ‘baby’ down the toilet,” Sturgeon said. “We later resolved to try again, but I knew then that we had lost our one chance.
“Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn’t pregnant,” she wrote. “There’s still a part of me that sees what happened as my punishment for that.”
She writes that she had been expecting a baby girl whom she would have named Isla. “I do deeply regret not getting the chance to be Isla’s mum.”
Sturgeon announced in March this year she would stand down as an MSP at the next Scottish parliament election, expected in 2026.
Frankly will be published on Thursday 14 August.
