This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

‘Here you come again,
Just when I’ve begun to get myself together,
You waltz right in the door, just like you’ve done before,
And wrap my heart around your little finger’
Dolly Parton, 1977

You have to wonder if Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon sit up late at night, glass of wine in hand, listening to sad old country and western tunes and thinking dark thoughts about each other through the tears.

“My life would’ve been so much better without you!”

“I hate you!”

“Why did we ever meet, God, why?”

They’re like an interminably divorced couple who really don’t have to ever see each other again, or even think about each other ever again, but just can’t help rolling up to a family wedding and screaming insults over the Asti Spumante and Campbell’s chicken and mushroom soup vol-au-vents.

They were at it again this week – waking the kids with their argument downstairs. Bojo wrote a booky-wook, you see, in which he just couldn’t help but slag off Nicky. In turn, Nicky did a journalism – reviewing the book, and popping up on a podcast to slag off Bojo.

I wonder who’s getting The Smiths records and the lovely raffia mat they bought that summer in Greece?

In his book, called Party While They Die (that’s a lie, it’s actually called Unleashed), the “disgraced former Prime Minister”, as he is known globally, talked snidey-fashion about “the sainted leader” of the SNP. His panties are still in bunch over Sturgeon gazumping him at every turn during Covid.

On he droned, about Sturgeon on TV “lips pursed, brow furrowed”. Poor wee Bojo had hurty-feelings as Sturgeon made him “look like a brutal English Tory while she was unco guid Princess Twinkletoes”.

To be honest, I’d quite like to be known as Twinkletoes, but not our former First Minister. Is she now “disgraced” too? I’m not sure. Certainly, she cut and run on her party, government and the Scottish electorate just before the heat came down, but that’s another matter. Onto her review of Unleashed.

Read more Unspun from Neil Mackay:

After a bit of throat-clearing, the ex-FM got to the point. “We don’t even like each other very much,” she wrote. No! You don’t say. Heavens to Betsy, let me pull up a chair and listen to these shocking new facts.

She was tempted into an “unthinking hatchet job… steeped in all my prejudices”. Instead, she performed a thinking hatchet-job. To be fair, she softens the digs here and there with faint approval about his “breezy” style, and saying he “deserves praise” for his support of Ukraine. 

There’s a rather mawkish part of the review where she shares “affinity with him” over the “unbearable burden of responsibility” they both felt as leaders during Covid. It was pretty unbearable for the rest of us too, but that’s evidently besides the point.

Elsewhere, Sturgeon pulls him up for his “crass jokes” – hard to disagree with her there; his “stuttering public-school boy style” (which feels a bit mean); and his “playground name-calling” – true again.

Johnson weirdly obsesses on Theresa May’s nostrils in the book, and Sturgeon seems obsessed by his obsession. She also upbraids him for the latent sexism in his comments about her pursed lips – asking if he’d have preferred her to create a “party atmosphere”. I quite liked that line.


“Making himself the hero is a theme,” Sturgeon says. Again, such amazing revelation about Mr World King. I’m kind of glad Sturgeon read this so I didn’t have to as it seems there’s nothing new to be had from either of them.

In the end, she concludes Johnson has a “messiah complex”, and believes “he is never wrong”. No way! Here was I thinking him a bashful, self-doubting sort. 

In a podcast to go along with the review, Sturgeon called Johnson a “playground bully” and pondered why she’d chosen to review his book. Indeed. We’re all wondering the same. 

She said she was “horrified” at the thought of being “nice” to old party-boy. Her review was a “public service”, Sturgeon explained, “because if I read and review it other people might not have to”. Which, I guess, is to be welcomed.

But why do this? These two hate each other. She once called him a “f**king clown”, and he called her “that bloody wee Jimmy Krankie woman”. As a literary critic, I’d advise not reviewing the work of people who: A, you’ve called a f**king clown; and B, who called you ‘wee Jimmy Krankie’. It may cloud your critique.

Read Neil Mackay every Friday in the Unspun newsletter.


Sturgeon, while nowhere near as despicable as Johnson, does share something in common with him. They both represent the worst of politics over the last decade: ego, ideology, and heading a cult of personality.

Politics is cruel and while both are still young, in their game they’re now has-beens. They should realise that and quit the stage. Though, God help us, both probably will make a return at some point – if their past doesn’t overtake them completely, clearly.

They would be best placed taking a leaf out of the book of the John Majors and Gordon Browns of this world, two leaders who weren’t much loved in their time – unlike Bojo and Oor Nick – but who, once they left office, only opened their mouths when they had something intelligent, decent and, more importantly, statesmanlike to say. 

But then, times have changed – and they changed because of Johnson and Sturgeon.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.