Do we like them?

Do we like Nicola Sturgeon?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A solid LGBTQ+ ally on the record, but her ex-husband's jailing left real questions about what she missed at the top of the SNP.

Sturgeon came up through Holyrood from the start: a Glasgow list MSP from 1999, MSP for Glasgow Southside from 2007, and first minister until 2023, nine years in the top job. In March 2025 she said she would not seek selection for the 2026 election, talking about wanting to “embrace different opportunities in a new chapter of my life”.

The first big cloud was Operation Branchform, the police probe into SNP finances. She was arrested in June 2023 and released without charge. In March 2025 police confirmed she was no longer under investigation, and she said she had been vindicated, with “never a scrap of evidence” against her. That is a clean legal outcome, and it matters.

Then 2026 happened. Her ex-husband, the SNP's former chief executive, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party between 2010 and 2022, and was jailed on 23 June. A statement from her lawyer said she was innocent of any crime and had been “utterly deceived and let down”. In a BBC interview she said “I'm not going to apologise for somebody else's crimes” but admitted an “error of judgment” in keeping him in the job. The SNP faces calls for an independent inquiry, and the public is sceptical.

On the harm check, the record is strong for LGBTQ+ people. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which moved to self-identification and lowered the minimum age to 16, passed Holyrood 86 to 39 while she was first minister. Westminster blocked it, the Court of Session upheld the block in December 2023, and she called the move a “full-frontal attack” on Scottish democracy. It was a contested law, and where you land on self-ID shapes how you read it.

The planet is the weaker side of the ledger. Her 2021 power-sharing deal with the Greens backed a review of oil and gas licences but did not commit to opposing new exploration. She also wouldn't say whether she backed the Cambo oil field, which left the Greens saying their hands were tied.

Put together, the picture is a politician who has stood up for queer and trans people in her words and laws. She has no conviction, and police ended their inquiry into her. But the person at the heart of the SNP's money was a man she trusted, and she accepts she erred in keeping him on. How hard you judge that is up to you, and it's why the nice test sits at mixed.