Rt Hon Nicola Sturgeon

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2015

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the Right Honourable Nicola Sturgeon, MSP.

Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the fifth First Minister of Scotland in the devolved era, she is the first woman to hold either post. The eldest of two daughters, she was brought up in Irvine and attended the local Dreghorn Primary School. A studious child, she was encouraged in her interest in current affairs by a teacher and joined the SNP aged 16. At 21, she was the youngest candidate in the 1992 General Election, contesting the safe Labour seat of Glasgow Shettleston.

She learned a lot about electoral defeat in those first years, but after several unsuccessful attempts, she was elected to the Scottish Parliament as a list MSP for Glasgow in 1999. She served as the party's shadow minister for education, and later for health and for justice and was elected deputy leader of her party in 2004, standing on a joint ticket with Alex Salmond. When the SNP won the highest number of seats in the 2007 election, she was appointed deputy First Minister. She also took on responsibility for the SNP's independence referendum campaign.

In November 2014, following the No vote in the Scottish independence referendum and the subsequent resignation of Alex Salmond, Sturgeon was elected leader of the SNP and became First Minister of Scotland. She's been awarded the Scottish Politician of the Year award three times and in 2015 was judged to be the Most Influential Woman in the UK by BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

She is married to Peter Murrell, Chief Executive of the SNP.

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. The My castaway this week is Nicholas Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister and leader of the
0:39.4	SMP. She is that rare and fascinating animal, a politician admired even by many who strongly disagree with her politics.
0:48.0	This year she took her party to staggering success at the general election, all but wiping out the opposition by winning 56 of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats.
0:58.0	Since she became party leader, the SMP's membership has quadrupled. Whether she's being huckled aside for yet another
1:05.2	selfie on the streets or incisively marshalling her argument in the televised leaders' debates,
1:10.4	it is her twin ability to appear both super smart and untypically straightforward that seems to connect with the electorate.
1:18.0	Everything in her background points to an entirely ordinary 1970s west of Scotland upbringing.
1:24.3	Dad and electrician, mum a dental nurse, days spent in a nice we local school, but by the age of
1:30.1	just 16 she'd forsaken the delights of Frosty's ice disco at the
1:33.6	Irvine Magnum Center to immerse herself in local politics which she admits makes
1:38.8	her sound like a really weird teenager. By the age of 21 she was the youngest candidate standing
1:45.1	at the 1992 general election. She says I'm a child of the Thatcher years. I came
1:50.6	into politics because of my desire for social justice and greater equality.
1:55.3	My background, where I grew up, all of that has conditioned my perspective.
2:00.4	So welcome, First Minister. It has of course been quite a 12 months.
2:05.0	We've had Scotland's historic independence vote in September last year.
2:10.0	Of course that vote was lost to you by 55% to 45.
2:13.7	You then took over unopposed as Alex Sammon's replacement.
2:17.7	And then in May of this year, we had, as I said,
	...

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