Joanna Cherry hits back at Sturgeon and does not rule out political comeback
The ex-SNP MP said Sturgeon ‘flirts and teases us with the idea that she might be a lesbian’
Joanna Cherry has said she would consider a return to frontline politics as she hit back at Nicola Sturgeon, suggesting the former first minister has not been open about her sexuality.
The ex-SNP MP said Ms Sturgeon “flirts and teases us with the idea that she might be a lesbian”.
It comes just days after the former first minister accused Ms Cherry of having an “unrequited obsession” with her and called her recently published book “sh*t” during an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Ms Cherry, who has returned to her successful legal career after losing her seat in 2024, has long been a fierce critic of Ms Sturgeon. She previously accused her of running the SNP and the country in a “Stalinist” way.
Appearing at Iain Dale’s All Talk show at the Fringe, she said: “Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t want to address the detail of the criticisms I have made of her over the years and in my book, and the way she gets round doing that is whenever my name is mentioned she says something reasonably rude about me.
“I’d like to say to her directly: don’t worry Nicola, I’m not obsessed with you. Unlike you, I have a very happy and meaningful career to fall back on, and also perhaps in contrast to her I have a very strong and happy relationship with my girlfriend, and I’m open about my sexuality and have been for a very long time.”
She accused Ms Sturgeon of using “her status as Peter Murrell’s wife” to try to deflect legitimate questions about her governance of the SNP and her stewardship of its finances.
Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, pled guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party earlier this year and was sentenced to more than five years in prison.
Ms Sturgeon was arrested and released without charge during the long-running police investigation, and her actions have since been the subject of intense scrutiny.
Speaking to Mr Dale on Saturday, she said she would not visit Murrell in jail or speak to him ever again, and accused him of lying to her “right up to the day he pled guilty”.
Ms Cherry was among those who raised concerns about the SNP’s finances as far back as 2019. She has also been highly critical of Ms Sturgeon’s position on trans rights and her policy of gender self-identification.
She said the former first minister had no “hinterland” in the gay rights or feminist movements and so did not understand their criticisms of self-ID.
“As she flirts and teases us with the idea that she might be a lesbian, what I would say to her is you need to think about what you owe the generations of lesbians and gay men who fought so that it was acceptable in this country - by which I mean Scotland and the United Kingdom - to be gay and to have equal rights and to realise that our protections under the Equality Act are just as important as those of trans people,” Ms Cherry said.
Ms Sturgeon wrote in her memoir, Frankly, that she had never considered sexuality to be “binary”.
Asked if Ms Sturgeon should be more frank, Ms Cherry said: “When it comes to people’s personal lives and sexuality, I think people are entitled to privacy, and I think Nicola is entitled to privacy.
“If she wants to bring the issue up, then people are obviously going to want to be beyond the strange statement she made about her sexuality not being binary.
“My main concern is that Nicola’s policy of self-identification of sex was very damaging not just to the rights of women but also to the rights of same-sex attracted people.”
Elsewhere, the former MP, who revealed she had quit the SNP earlier this year, did not rule out a political comeback.
“I would certainly consider it,” she said. “If Stephen [Flynn, the party’s former Westminster leader] became leader, for example, I would hope that he might extend an amnesty to many of us who left the party and say come back.
“I didn’t resign publicly so there shouldn’t be any reason why I can’t re-join.”
She added: “There would no doubt be people who wouldn’t want me to come back into the party, but I suspect Stephen would see that differently.
“So I would consider it, but I’m not considering it at the moment. I left the party after I finished writing my book because I thought, why am I still in this party? And also because I was so disgusted by the response to the Supreme Court decision on For Women Scotland.
“And I also thought it would be easier for me to be very openly critical in my book and in the publicity around my book if I was no longer a member.
“I have no political ambitions in the foreseeable future. Lots of people write to me in the independence movement and ask me to come back and wave some sort of magic wand, but there’s a real mess been left behind by those in leadership over the last 10 years and it cannot be solved by one person.
“It will need a sea change in the party before the party can move forward and take the country to independence and I would like to see some evidence that that sea change has happened before I re-joined.”
She added: “I turn 60 this year. I have a really good career. I have a very happy and fulfilled life. I can’t really stomach the thought at the moment of what I’d be putting myself through if I went back into the fray, but I’m not ruling it out in the long-run.”
Ms Cherry said she was one of the few SNP figures to emerge from the last decade “with their reputation enhanced rather than damaged”.
She added: “If Nicola Sturgeon wants to badmouth me, it’s really water off a duck’s back. I’ve moved on, I’ve gone back to my legal career.
“I’m very fortunate to have a very loving family and a very loving partner and lots of really good friends.
“Also I know I have the respect of a large swathe of the public, although the Nicola fangirls and fanboys who were here on Saturday don’t like me, but that’s a dwindling tribe.”
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