Nicola Sturgeon: Peter Murrell lied to me until guilty plea

Speaking at an event at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the former first minister said her estranged husband had been lying to her "right up till the day he pled guilty".

Ms Sturgeon said she also felt like a "mug" for worrying about Murrell in recent months and that she would not be visiting him in prison, our sister title The Herald reports.

The SNP's former chief executive is currently serving a five-year and three-month prison sentence for embezzling £400,310.65 from party funds between 2010 and 2022.

Much of the cash went on luxury items, including £124,550 on a motorhome that travelled just four miles before police seized it.

He also spent £42,660.74 on Amazon and £139,971 on other purchases over the same period.

Nicola Sturgeon speaking to Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe (Image: NQ)

Ms Sturgeon told the audience at the Iain Dale show she learned about Murrell's crimes at the same time as the public.

"I've learned a lot about what he did at the same time all of you did, because obviously he never really levelled with me.

"On the day he pled guilty, I was still learning about some of the detail of what he'd done for the first time, and then suddenly realising that I've been living with somebody I never really knew properly. That's obviously first and foremost been something for me to come to terms with.

"And I don't think I'm there yet. My whole family is having to come to terms with that as well. It's a really difficult process."

"I'm not the first person, and I will not be the last person, who is horribly betrayed by a spouse. The nature of it is a bit different, what I'm going through is different in nature because of the public element of it.

"It's probably not that different to what a lot of people go through, but it's really hard to come to terms with."

Ms Sturgeon said that while they were sharing the house, she "absented" herself as much as they practically could.

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"There's part of me still trying to understand this as well, because I've been so deeply betrayed by this person, and yet part of me still found myself worrying about whether he was okay. And I find that easier now that he's no longer there in front of me.

"It's a really complex cocktail of emotions," she said. "Because you can't just stop caring about somebody that you've been married to for as long, and lived with for even longer. It's almost like it becomes two separate people.

"There's the person you thought you knew, that you still care about, and there's this person that you're now only starting to know or understand, and it's a really difficult thing to process.

"And I think it's going to take me a long time to process. There are some days I don't think about it that much, and there are other days where I can't think of anything else. And I think it's probably going to be like that for quite some time."

"I didn't know he was going to plead guilty till very, very close to the point he did," Ms Sturgeon said.

"Of the things I knew — things I'd been asked about myself by the police, things that had appeared in the media, which all turned out to be a fraction of what actually then transpired — I struggled to see how he couldn't be guilty.

"He was still a bit, you know, 'it's all been misunderstanding'. I found out less than a week before he pled guilty that he was going to plead guilty, so I didn't have very long to prepare myself for that. I'd still been thinking, oh, he's going to go to trial, that might be a year away.

"But then when the prosecution read out some of the detail of it in court, there was a line that hit me like a ton of bricks — that he'd been negotiating a guilty plea since the third of March, and I hadn't known that.

"He was still lying to me right up till the day he pled guilty, and that's a really, really hard thing to process."

Ms Sturgeon said she had been worried about his well-being and his mental health.

“And then, now I think: ‘What a mug, why were you worried about him?’ He didn’t worry about me. He didn’t worry at all about what he was doing."

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"I'm not a victim," she added. "I don't have a victim mentality, and I never will allow any man to turn me into a victim. The crime he committed was perpetrated on the SNP, which is why I get really angry when the SNP gets a hard time.

"The SNP is the victim of his crime, but what he has subjected me to is beyond anything I could ever have comprehended.

"So I don't understand why he did it. He had no need to do it. I don't understand, and I don't think I ever will understand his motivation, but whatever that motivation was, he could not have stopped at any point and thought about me. And yet I was still, at least up until recently, worrying about him."

Asked if she had, or would, visit him in prison, she said no.

"I'm not going to speak to him. I'm not going to visit him."

(Image: PA)

Ms Sturgeon said she had been unfairly treated in the press following the plea.

"There was a period just after he pled guilty where my name and picture was on more front pages than his were.

“I was the first minister. I expect scrutiny and accountability for the things I do. I’m not responsible for the crimes of someone else.

“And I have felt at times, rightly or wrongly, that he has had an easier bloody ride than I’ve had, and it feels deeply unjust and deeply unfair.

“So no, I’m not going to spend any more time worrying about him.”

She argued the scrutiny she faced had a gendered dimension.

"I've heard it so often in the last number of weeks: 'she must have known.'

"I'm just going to ask you to reverse this for a second. Imagine I'd been a male first minister, and my wife had committed the crime. Is that what would have been said? Or instead, would the narrative be, he was busy, he was running the country, how was he meant to know what his wife was doing?

"So I'm not trying to escape legitimate scrutiny and accountability. I just also think there's an element — a big element — of sexism and misogyny in how I've been treated in relation to the crimes of a man, that wouldn't have been the case had I been the man."

Ms Sturgeon told Mr Dale she had gone through a database of Murrell's purchases compiled by the BBC, saying she had never seen most of what was on the list.

Ms Sturgeon was also asked whether there should be an independent inquiry into the case. Ms Sturgeon said she did not believe that was a decision for her, and questioned what such an inquiry would examine, given the criminal justice process had already run its course.

"He committed a crime, he's pled guilty, he's in jail," she said. "What are we inquiring into?"

She acknowledged the issue had become politically contested, predicting opposition parties would continue to use it against the SNP, while suggesting her own party would likely do the same "if the boot was on the other foot."