Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has fired a parting shot at "bully boy alpha males" after giving some rare insight to the challenges of leadership during a keynote speech earlier today.
Sturgeon, who left Bute House in March 2023, addressed stepping out of Alex Salmond’s shadow following the 2014 independence referendum and the challenge Donald Trump poses to Sir Keir Starmer at the opening session of Scotland’s Housing Festival.
At the two-day event run by the Chartered Institute of Housing, the former First Minister spoke candidly about the many challenges she faced in Government, singling out the pandemic as “the biggest leadership challenge by a country mile”.
Sturgeon encouraged the Scottish Government to spend more on good housing stock, arguing: “Good housing underpins almost every other objective a Government will have.”
Nicola SturgeonPAHowever, the Glasgow Southside MSP admitted “there are no easy options” when it comes to Scottish Government finances.
“We thought we could make the buet go further by cutting subsidy levels and get more efficient,” she said. “But we quickly realised that hit supply because we were going too far so we recognised that and turned it around."
Sturgeon added: “We need to find innovation and greater efficiency, but we need to be careful we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”
In addition to housing, the three-term First Minister took the leadership conversation wider and spoke about the significant challenges of the pandemic and the similar magnitude of challenges currently facing Starmer.
“It didn’t really matter whatever else I was trying to do in government when Covid struck,” she told the conference hall of the sold out event. I had to put everything else aside and focus entirely on that.
Donald TrumpREUTERS“Keir Starmer just now will be going through a similar process in his head - all of the plans he had for what he wanted to do with his first term as Prime Minister - and I’m not going to make any judgments on how he is getting on with that.
“All of that has gone out the window in terms of having to respond to Trump in the White House, Trump’s decisions on Ukraine and having to build that European alternative to support Ukraine.”
She fired a shot at “bully boy alpha males” of “leadership upending the world we are living in".
Sturgeon also spoke about her sudden realisation that what worked for her predecessor, the late Alex Salmond, would not work for her as a female leader.
“I was the deputy First Minister for seven years to an alpha male leader,” she said.
“I learned a lot of good stuff from him over the years, but I quickly learned that when I stepped into that leadership role, if I had simply tried to emulate how he had led then that would have been wrong because [we were] very different personalities.”
Alex Salmond
PAThe topic of President Trump was raised a second time towards the end of a Q&A session with delegates from the housing sector.
When asked if she considered Margaret Thatcher as “an effective leader” in spite of her views on 1980’s Tory policies, Sturgeon responded by observing that history often alters public perception of political leaders.
“I remember we all lived through George W Bush and the Iraq War and most people - I think - I’m not trying to be political here - most people would have thought George W Bush wasn’t the best person to have ever occupied the White House… at the time,” she said.
“But now that we’ve had the experience of Trump, you actually look back at George W Bush and think, 'Awwww, wasn’t he good?! I wish he’d come back.’ so history and experience changes your view.
“I think the experience of some of the Prime Ministers in more recent times makes people think back to the days of Thatcher with rose-tinted spectacles.”
She went on to describe how the Iron Lady “decimated” the Ayrshire community she grew up in but in a final quip before the end of the session, Sturgeon sought to, “to end on a positive” she repeated that Thatcher was the former First Minister’s motivation to get into politics, if only because she “hated everything [Thatcher] stood for".
The former First Minister is keeping her cards close to her chest about whether she decides to stand in Glasgow South in the 2026 Scottish General Election, or drop the curtain on her parliamentary career.
Sturgeon’s first election victory as SNP leader - the 2015 Scottish election landslide - was testament to the unwavering trust the nation once had in her leadership.
But considering the nature of her hastened departure from top flight politics and the unfurling of Operation Branchstorm revelations from her tenure, her retrospective analysis of Thatcher raises similar questions about how Scotland will look back on its first female First Minister in the decades to come.
