Sturgeon: Farage doesn’t seem ‘particularly comfortable around women’

The former first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has described Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage as “odious”, suggesting he is “not particularly comfortable, particularly around women.”

In an interview with ITV News’ Julie Etchingham to mark her forthcoming memoir Frankly’s release, Nicola Sturgeon claimed she heard Nigel Farage boasting that he had been drinking heavily before going on air for the televised ITV 2015 election debate.

Nicola Sturgeon also spoke of her complicated feelings about her late friend turned political enemy, Alex Salmond, revealing she cried when she was told her former political mentor had died.

Sturgeon, not a politician to mince her words, writes candidly about her political opponents.

Asked about the rise in support for Nigel Farage in Scotland, a political rival she has previously butted heads with, she did not change tack.

“This is my impression, other people might have a different view of him. He just comes across as somebody who’s got a very, very fragile ego,” Sturgeon said, adding that her impression was he was “somebody who’s not particularly comfortable, particularly around women.”

‘He just comes across as someone who has got a very, very fragile ego,’ Sturgeon says about Farage

In her book, she also describes Farage as “odious”.

Speaking to ITV News, Sturgeon recalled her experience of the televised 2015 election debate.

“Just before we went on air that night… I just remember hearing him tell somebody how much he’d had to drink in the green room beforehand,” she said.

“It just felt this kind of bravado and just not very pleasant.”

Nigel Farage did not respond to ITV News’ request for comment.

The Reform leader once described Sturgeon as “the single-most unpleasant leader” he had ever met.

Sturgeon was also asked about the late Alex Salmond, once her party’s leader, who would go on to be charged and later acquitted of multiple sexual assault allegations – ultimately emerging with a new party as Sturgeon’s political rival.

The scandal would spill into her own leadership of the SNP, with Sturgeon accused of conspiring against him, and questioned over how much she knew of his alleged behaviour.

‘I was hit by this wave of grief,’ Nicola Sturgeon reveals the moment she heard of Alex Salmond’s death

Despite this complicated relationship, and having not spoken in years, Sturgeon described the “strange” feeling she had on hearing the news of his death.

“I still miss him in some way,” she said.

“I thought I had made my peace with it.

“I’d got to a point where I felt nothing – And then I got a call.

“I started crying on the phone and I just was hit by this wave of grief.”