Sturgeon seeks to play down crisis in final week as first minister of Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon has claimed the crisis surrounding the Scottish National party’s “fractious” leadership battle is a necessary part of its renewal, in her final speech as party leader.

Speaking at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London, Sturgeon said the leadership contest sparked by her decision to resign was “proving to be a challenging and difficult process”, but denied it would cause longerterm damage to the SNP’s fortunes.

It was “a moment to change, refresh and renew”, she said, playing down the significance of the crisis.

Sturgeon’s remarks followed one of the most bruising periods in the SNP’s history after her husband, Peter Murrell, was forced to resign on Saturday morning as its chief executive. The SNP’s national executive committee had warned he faced a no-confidence motion he was certain to lose.

The committee’s revolt came after the SNP’s head of communications at Holyrood, Murray Foote, quit on Friday, having learned he had unwittingly lied to the media about a sudden slump in SNP membership figures. Murrell, who along with Sturgeon and her predecessor, Alex Salmond, had shaped and dominated the party for 20 years, had been resisting intense pressure from leadership candidates Ash Regan and Kate Forbes to disclose how many members could vote in the election.

Regan in particular has implied the voting process may not be fair and transparent, with her allies suggesting the voting firm involved was not sufficiently independent – allegations Sturgeon has repeatedly denied.

Foote had been told to rubbish what turned out to be accurate media reports that SNP membership had slumped by 30,000 in the past year. On Thursday, the SNP acknowledged that only 72,000 members could vote – nearly 32,000 fewer than the last official figure.

In an interview with ITV News earlier yesterday, Sturgeon claimed she did not know 30,000 people had quit the party in the past year and implied her husband had not passed that information on to her. She said Murrell had inadvertently misframed the response to media inquiries.

Sturgeon was not directly challenged about that issue at the RSA but was asked about admissions from Mike Russell, the party’s honorary president and interim chief executive, on Sunday that the party was in a “tremendous mess” over the leadership contest.

She said the SNP rarely staged leadership contests and had had only three people lead it over the past 30 years, implying it was out of practice. “It’s proving to be a challenging and difficult process, but it’s a necessary process to embrace change,” Sturgeon said, as she began her last week in office.

“[This] is an unusual process for the SNP but it’s essential and it’s healthy, and while it might not feel it right now, it will, I think, lead to a stronger position.”

Over the past few weeks Sturgeon’s political legacy and her policy agenda, on the climate crisis, on gender recognition, on her powersharing deal with the Scottish Greens, and on the quest for Scottish independence, has come under attack by contestants to succeed her.

The last opinion polls – carried out a week ago, before the latest crisis – show support for the SNP in a Westminster general election has dipped to below 40%, leaving it only 10 points ahead of Scottish Labour.