Nicola Sturgeon Loses Another Round to JK Rowling

Stefan Rousseau/Pool Photo via AP

Former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is the kind of politician who gives politicians a bad name. She's the kind of character who seems to have no capacity for shame whatsoever. Every pronouncement she makes, even if it completely contradicts what she said yesterday, is delivered with absolute conviction. My favorite example of this, and it's relevant to this story, happened back in January 2023 when Sturgeon found herself on the ropes over her support for trans people. 

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Sturgeon was a big fan of self-ID, the ability of people to simply announce they were male or female and then get a certificate from the government saying it was so. She championed a Gender Recognition Reform Bill that would have made this the law in Scotland. But about a month later her bill came into conflict with reality in the form of Isla Bryson, a trans woman who also happened to be a convicted rapist. The question at the time was whether or not Scottish authorities would be forced to send Bryson to a women's prison. That led to this embarrassing reversal from Sturgeon where she said that, of course, a male rapist wouldn't be sent to a women's prison.

And a few days after that, Sturgeon was pressed to explain the contradiction and utterly failed to do so in one of the worst woke-word-salad moments you'll ever see. (The tweet says 2025 but this interview aired on Jan. 30, 2023).

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It's almost as if her worldview doesn't make any sense. Two weeks later, Sturgeon announced she was resigning. Six weeks after that (late March 2023) she was gone. But two years later, she still couldn't manage to answer a question about this. Watch as she talks herself into another corner.

For obvious reasons, Sturgeon was frequently at odds with J.K. Rowling both during and after her time in office. 

Rowling is clearly not a fan.

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There are many more examples over the past several years, including Rowling's review of Sturgeon's autobiography. But recently, Sturgeon has been in the news for a new reason. Her husband of 15 years was just convicted of embezzlement of several hundred thousand pounds.

Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell has been sentenced to five years and three months in jail after he admitted to embezzling more than ÂŁ400,000 from the party.

Murrell - the estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon - used the funds to buy goods ranging from cars and a motorhome to kitchenware and toiletries.

The 61-year-old's sentence was backdated to 25 May, when he was remanded in custody after pleading guilty.

So, just to be really clear, he stole this money from the party that his wife was once the leader of while they were still married. In fact, although Nicola has announced her intent to divorce him, they are still married now. This has led many people to wonder how Nicola never noticed all the fancy things he was bringing home.

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Sturgeon has maintained that, like Col. Klink in the old TV show, she knew nothing. Memes of Sturgeon as a blind woman circulated.

Rowling also got in on it.

A couple days ago, Rowling added this:

Sturgeon, for her part, is now living in London and makes the rounds to various public events including one that happened this week where she claimed misogyny was behind claims that she must have known about her husband's crimes.

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Sturgeon has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Murrell’s crimes, saying she was lied to and betrayed, a position she reiterated on Saturday while speaking to Iain Dale for an All Talk show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The former SNP leader further told the festival crowd that she had “learned a lot about what he did at the same time all of you did, because over three years he never really levelled with me”...

“I'm not trying to escape legitimate scrutiny and accountability. I just think that there has been – there is – an element, quite a big element, of sexism and misogyny over how I've been treated in relation to the crimes of a man, that wouldn't have been the case had I been the man.”

She also attacked Rowling as someone obsessed with her.

The comments came after Dale asked an audience-submitted question about whether there should be an “amnesty with JK Rowling”. The Harry Potter author had made headlines the previous day with an attack on Sturgeon, alleging that she had been “the blindest wife ever to enjoy the fruits of a fraudster husband’s theft”.

Sturgeon said: “I'll say this as gently and as directly, I'm not at war with JK Rowling. She seems to be at war with me, so if there's going to be an amnesty, I think it's probably going to have to come from her.”

She went on: “We disagree on more than one thing. We disagreed on independence, we clearly disagree on trans rights – but my God, that woman is obsessed with me.

“I don't spend as much time thinking about her as she clearly does, so sorry.”

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So there you have it. All of Sturgeon's critics are obsessed and/or misogynists. And she did absolutely nothing wrong and knew absolutely nothing about her husband's crimes.

I guess Sturgeon still has her fans though, I can't imagine why. Some of them will buy this and so long as they do she'll keep selling it.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | August 07, 2026
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