Former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has claimed that Harry Potter author JK Rowling is “obsessed” with her.
Ms Sturgeon made the comments during an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, following a post on X the day before where Ms Rowling described the former SNP leader as a “world-class misogynist” and “profoundly disloyal” to her party.
Asked by broadcaster Iain Dale if she wanted an “amnesty” with the author, Ms Sturgeon said she was not “at war”.
“She seems to be at war with me,” she said.
“So if we’re going to get an amnesty, I think it’s probably going to have to come from her.”
Ms Rowling has been an outspoken critic of the former first minister, particularly on gender issues.
They have become a hot-button issue in Scotland since Ms Sturgeon’s attempt to reform gender recognition laws in 2022.
“We disagree on more than one thing – we disagree about independence, we clearly disagree on trans rights,” Ms Sturgeon said.
“My god, that woman is obsessed with me.
“I don’t spend as much time thinking about her as she does thinking about me.”
The former first minister also hit out at Joanna Cherry KC – the former SNP MP who has been one of her most vociferous critics.
Ms Sturgeon described the former MP’s book, which was heavily critical of her time as SNP leader and first minister and was published earlier this year, as “s***”.
Ms Cherry “seems to have an obsession with me that is not reciprocated”, she said when asked if there was a question she would like to put to the former MP when she appears in a later edition of the show.
“It’s not a question, it’s a challenge,” Ms Sturgeon said.
“Can she get through more than 30 seconds of the answer to any question without talking about me?”
Asked if she had read Ms Cherry’s book, Ms Sturgeon said that she had not.
“One of the things that distresses me most the older I get is that realisation of all of the books I’ll never get to read,” she said.
“Why on earth would I spend time reading one that’s s***?”
Ms Sturgeon also opened up about her relationship with her estranged husband Peter Murrell, who 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.
Ms Sturgeon said that she had not spoken to Murrell since he was jailed and added she would not visit him in prison.
She said that 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.
“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.”
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.”
