Frankly goes to Holyrood
Nicola Sturgeon , Issue 1656

NICOLA STURGEON's memoir Frankly was billed as a scorchingly introspective account of her record as Scotland's first minister. And yet even the first extract in The Times raised more questions than it answered.

In the excerpt, Sturgeon shot down rumours of a lesbian affair with a French diplomat, before adding that "I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary". She then spent a week chiding interviewers for reading too much into this.

As for the campervan saga, which led to the arrest of her estranged husband Peter Murrell – chief executive of the SNP at the time she was the party leader – she writes in Frankly that she was delighted to be cleared by police, although "nothing I say here is meant as commentary on the situation he is in."

You may have spotted that this does not sound like a ringing endorsement of Murrell's innocence.

High tension
Then again, one of the central tensions of Frankly is that it is both an explicitly feminist memoir of a woman breaking the glass ceiling, and the story of a politician whose career was boosted by two men who have faced serious accusations of impropriety.

Very few laddies come out well from Frankly. David Cameron is polite but patrician, Nigel Farage is brittle, and Sturgeon disliked the "aloofness and sneering superiority" of Jeremy Corbyn.

However, Alan Johnson is a "class act" ("Nicola Sturgeon tells her remarkable story with great skill and unflinching honesty" – Alan Johnson) and she had an "unexpected bond of affection" for Martin McGuinness.

Nats' piss
The best sections are about Alex Salmond, who emerges here as a manipulative, charming bully. Sturgeon even wonders if he leaked the results of the #MeToo inquiry against him to the Daily Record in the hope of "controlling the narrative." (That has led to howls of outrage from Salmondistas online.)

The dynamic between the two nationalists is fascinating, a little like Salieri and Mozart in Amadeus. How was it fair that Sturgeon swotted so hard, read every briefing and prepped for every interview, and yet people preferred Salmond's casual swagger? Sturgeon makes a compelling case that the answer is sexism.

At the same time, she succeeded in the macho world of Scottish politics through fierce partisanship and judiciously thrown elbows, all while claiming to represent a kinder, gentler politics. That grated on her opponents.

Time to talk
What's next for Sturgeon? You have to worry that it's a podcast.

She expresses a desire to talk more about her menopause, or undertake a late-life Rumspringa. She has been showing off a new tattoo on the book tour (an infinity symbol that has a beginning and end), and talking about spending time in London or abroad.

She and the Holyrood press corps now openly loathe each other, and the book has had few defenders among other SNP politicians.

Her book tour, however, is drawing loyal fans who frequently interrupt with applause. Frankly, that's not surprising. As the first woman to govern Scotland, and a leader who achieved almost none of her political desires, Sturgeon's story is one of personal triumph – and policy failure.

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