Nicola Sturgeon feels like a ‘mug’ over Murrell and won’t visit him in prison

By Craig Paton, Press Association Scotland Deputy Political Editor

Former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she will not visit her estranged husband in prison as she claimed she felt like a “mug” for continuing to care about him.

Peter Murrell was jailed for more than five years in June after pleading guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP while serving as its chief executive, spending the cash on luxury items.

Speaking to broadcaster Iain Dale during a podcast recording at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Sturgeon said she had not spoken to Murrell since he was jailed and added she would not visit him in prison.

She only discovered he was due to plead guilty a week before he appeared in court, but it emerged he had been negotiating his plea for months before then, a fact which “hit me like a tonne of bricks”.

“He was still lying to me right up until the day he pled guilty,” Ms Sturgeon said.

The former first minister added: “He was very isolated over that period, he very rarely left the house, he wasn’t communicative, I was a bit 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.

‘What he has subjected me to is beyond anything I could ever have comprehended.

“I don’t understand why he did it, he had no need to do it, I don’t think I will ever understand his motivations.

“But whatever that motivation was, he could not have stopped and ever thought about me.

“But I was, until recently, still worrying about him.”

Asked if she would visit him in prison, Sturgeon replied: “No.” She added: “I’m not going to speak to him, I’m not going to visit him.

The former first minister added that she was still learning details of the purchases Murrell had made using party funds when he was in court.

“Over the years, he never really levelled with me,” she said.

“The day he pled guilty, I was still learning about some of the detail of what he had done for the first time.

“I suddenly realised I had been living with somebody that I never really knew properly.

“That’s something for me to come to terms with, and I don’t think I’m there yet, but also for my family to come to terms with. It’s a really difficult process.”