NICOLA Sturgeon has accused Boris Johnson of disgracing the office of Prime Minister.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe show of broadcaster Ayesha Hazarika, the First Minister said: “I disagreed with David Cameron, I disagreed with Theresa May, I disagreed with Boris Johnson, but he’s the only one who’s actually disgraced the office of prime minister. The sooner he’s gone, the better.”

 

She said the idea that parties were taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic "while the rest of the country was going through the horrors of it really blows my mind.”

“Parties themselves are bad enough, but it was the lying, frankly, and the constant attempt to shift the goalposts and the narrative. He was a disgrace, let’s be honest," Ms Sturgeon added.

The First Minister said that at the beginning of the pandemic it would have been "far better to have Theresa May" in No 10 as "she always knew her stuff. She knew her brief."

The first minister called for more diversity in politics and praised Scottish Labour for having diverse leaders.

She added: “Here’s a sentence you’ll never hear me utter before: to be fair to Labour in Scotland, they’ve already had a woman leader and they’ve currently got a Muslim leader, so UK Labour really has to get its act together on diversity.”

When asked who she would prefer to see as prime minister between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, Ms Sturgeon avoided the question. She said: "They will never win an election in Scotland. What do Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all have in common? They have never won an election in Scotland.”

Responding to Ms Truss’s remarks that she was an attention seeker, Ms Sturgeon you had to be a bit of an attention seeker as a politician to get your policies noticed.

 

 

She also hit out at the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, for entering the House of Lords. She said: “Ruth decided to retire from politics, but then it transpired she wasn’t really intending to retire from politics – she just wanted to continue without scrutiny and the tedious bit of having to put yourself forward for election.

“So all of the good bits of politics without the tough bit of getting elected. I don’t think that’s a particularly good thing to do.”

Ms Sturgeon took questions from some audience members who asked her if it was possible to have a “good-natured debate” about independence.

“Of course it’s possible to have a good-natured, civilised debate about independence, but that requires all of us involved in that,” she said. “The only appropriate way to decide matters we disagree on is through democracy.”