Nicola Sturgeon said it is too easy to regard politicians like US President, Donald Trump, as some sort of comedy, but the implications are more serious.
The former First Minister appeared on stage at Portobello Town Hall on New Year’s Day, as a guest of Edinburgh Makar, Michael Pedersen.
The event, Muckle Be The Light, which was part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay’s First Footin’, was a chat show style evening hosted by Michael, who talked first with Shirley Manson of Garbage about her songwriting career, and then to Nicola about her first book, Frankly.
Prescient words
In what turned out to be prescient words only two days after the Portobello event, when Trump instructed his military to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in Caracas, Ms Sturgeon warned against finding President Trump, even a little amusing.
In her book Ms Sturgeon recounts the tale of her phone call with then Mr Trump, which took place in 2017, between the time of his election and his first inauguration. She said she wanted to keep the conversation quite high level and asked about his Scottish businesses, and who would look after them when he became president.
She recalled: “It immediately went into an account by the incoming US President about his sons – he had the best sons any man has ever had. He had a Scottish mother – she was the best mother anybody has ever had. And he asked had I seen the stock market since he was elected – it was a record high, and he had the best polling of any president in the history of polling. At this point he was on a Trump aircraft, and I was in my constituency office in Govanhill, and he invited me to the White House.
“I tell this in a jocular fashion in the book, but that is falling into the trap that these politicians set for us. If we’re laughing at them then we’re not paying attention to the really serious stuff that they’re doing. Right now he is presiding over what is, frankly, the dismantling of the American constitution and American democracy, and this is a time to pay attention. This is a serious moment in history.”
Frankly
Ms Sturgeon said the book, Frankly, will be her only political memoir, although she admitted that she is in the early stages of trying to write a novel. She told the audience she always wanted to write a book, and the first novel is planned as a political thriller. (“I keep making the hoke that this is where I will actually take all my revenge. I didn’t do it in Frankly as I didn’t want to write that kind of memoir.”)
She said: “Aside from politics, since I was a wee girl, reading novels is the thing I love to do most, and I think probably it was my earliest ambition to write a book. I had two ambitions when I was a little girl – neither of them was to be First Minister. I either wanted to be a lawyer (God knows why because I didn’t know any lawyers) or the next Enid Blyton. I wanted to write books, and as a kid your only point of reference is children’s books, so something I’ve always wanted to do was to have a book published. It’s now like a dream come true and I’ve loved the experience.”
Emotions running high
Ms Sturgeon told the audience that she had become quite emotional while waiting in the wings. She explained that there was a strange coincidence between her career and that of Michael’s other guest, Shirley Manson.
She said: “It is going to turn out that Garbage concerts will be the bookends to my parliamentary life. On the day of the official opening of The Scottish Parliament in 1999, Shirley and Garbage played the big concert to mark the opening in Princes Street Gardens. I saw you Shirley playing there, and I am going to come to Edinburgh Castle in the summer just as my parliamentary career ends to see you again.”
Ms Sturgeon, the former First Minister of Scotland, is due to step down as an MSP this spring ahead of the Scottish Parliamentary election on 7 May. She announced her resignation as First Minister on 15 February 2023, saying that the job had taken its toll on her.
Garbage
Edinburgh musician and songwriter, Shirley Manson, who now lives in Los Angeles, admitted that the first time she had met Nicola Sturgeon, she (Shirley) had burst into tears.
She said she had never ever met a woman who “had done so much for so many people ever”. She remarked it was just after the pandemic, and praised Ms Sturgeon as she said: “It was right after Covid, when you had held, not just our country together, but countries all over the world, including the United States. Everybody I knew in America was like – Have you checked out what Nicola Sturgeon is saying? You should follow her. Everybody globally was listening to the common sense that you offered so easily, and with a lot of grace, and I’m just so eternally grateful to you for so many things.”
Shirley Manson and Garbage were asked by Regular Music to appear at Edinburgh Castle on 11 July 2026, and Shirley divulged that her previous band, Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie will also perform then.
