Nicola Sturgeon: I understand why people doubt my ignorance of alleged SNP embezzlement | Nicola Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon said she fully understood why many people found it hard to believe she had no knowledge of alleged embezzlement within the Scottish National Party, given her close connections to her home life, but insisted that was the case.

Speaking to the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast, the former Scottish first minister said her relaxed demeanor in the period immediately after she resigned as first minister, weeks before police searched the home she shared with her then husband Peter Murrell, would have been impossible had she suspected things were going wrong.

Sturgeon announced her departure in February 2023. In April that year, Murrell was arrested and police searched the Glasgow home the couple shared and the SNP’s headquarters in Edinburgh. Officers also seized a caravan parked outside Murrell’s mother’s home in Fife.

Murrell, the SNP’s long-serving chief executive, was later charged with alleged embezzlement and has yet to enter a plea. Earlier this year police said Sturgeon was no longer under investigation.

Asked if she could understand why she found it hard to believe that many people, including SNP supporters, were unaware of any possible wrongdoing, Sturgeon replied: “I certainly can.”

He continued: “If I were from the outside looking in at the events that unfolded in the days after I resigned, I too would have found it hard to believe it. But believe me, I had no idea.”

“Obviously, I knew there was an investigation at the point where I stood back. I think my views on the investigation were more about frustration as to why it had been going on for so long, rather than any real concern about where it was going to go.”

After announcing her decision to resign, Sturgeon said, “I was more relieved than I had been in years, because I knew I had made the right decision, and I was looking to the future with hope.”

He continued: “I know people find it hard to believe that politicians are human, but the idea that I would have functioned in any way, let alone appeared casual, if I had known what was about to transpire is complete nonsense. So no, I didn’t.”

Also in the interview, Sturgeon argued that the resurgence of the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru and Reform UK in Wales could mean the UK is witnessing the gradual collapse of the union.

He said a possible Reform government in Westminster could further exacerbate the tensions raised by Brexit; where “there are different views or different directions of political travel between the four UK countries, then very often what England chooses dominates Wales, Scotland and to a lesser extent but still to some extent Northern Ireland.”

He said this was not a sustainable position in the long term. “We’ll see a complete restructuring of the nations of the United Kingdom in the next 10, 20 years. And I think we’ll get to something like a confederation of the British Isles or an independent Scotland, certainly a much more autonomous Wales, probably an independent Wales.” [and a] “He reunited Ireland.”

Sturgeon also defended the bill to simplify the gender recognition process, which was blocked by Rishi Sunak’s government and is thought to have played a part in the backlash against transgender rights, which eventually led to a landmark high court ruling on gender in April.

“I know there are a lot of people who would like me to say that I am completely wrong about gender recognition,” he said.

“I’m not going to say that because I don’t believe that’s the case. I’m a feminist; always have been, always will be.”

“I have defended women’s rights as long as I have been in politics and will do so as long as there is breath in my body, but I will never accept that this is inconsistent with defending the rights of stigmatized minorities. And there are fewer minorities in the world, not just in this country, that are more stigmatized than trans people.”