Nicola Sturgeon fears women will be put off entering politics by social media abuse and safety fears

Nicola Sturgeon fears women will be put off entering politics in future due to the impact of social media abuse and concerns over their personal safety.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

The First Minister said there was no doubt politicians felt “less safe” than ever before because of the way political debate had become so much more polarised and toxic.

Interviewed by actress Nicola Roy for The Cultural Coven podcast, the First Minister recalled the impact of having her home address posted online and being confronted in the street by a far-right candidate on election day in Glasgow.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ms Sturgeon also recalled feeling overwhelmed and "really terrified" during the early days of the Covid pandemic due to the magnitude of decisions she had to take and admitted regularly bursting into tears.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Picture: Jane Barlow/WPA Pool/Getty ImagesFirst Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Picture: Jane Barlow/WPA Pool/Getty Images
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Picture: Jane Barlow/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Read More
Scotland's political leaders must tackle their own 'toxic' supporters – Scotsman...

Asked how safe she felt as a modern-day politician, Ms Sturgeon said: “For me personally, I’m the First Minister, so I have a degree of security that other politicians won’t have.

“I think for all politicians, and I would feel this too, we are less safe than when I was starting out in politics. I don’t think there is any doubt about that at all.

“The political climate and culture is much more polarised and toxic. Social media has a big part to play as it allows people who always existed, but were on the margins but never had a platform before, to have that platform to hurl abuse directly at people.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"Sometimes that spills out into the real world and people confront politicians, attack politicians and sadly as we’ve seen twice in recent years in the UK murder politicians.

“It's definitely, definitely much more of a worry and a thought than it was in previous years.

“These are the kind of things that you would never have worried about in the past.

“I fear we are going to find it more difficult to attract people into politics, particularly women, who get abuse on social media much, much more than men do.

“For people like me, you have to not give into that.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ms Sturgeon was asked whether there had been times during the pandemic when she “had a good old cry and thought ‘I can’t do this today’.”

She said: “Oh yeah, absolutely, many many times, particularly over the early months.

“If I think back to the early days and weeks, it felt overwhelming and really terrifying because none of us really knew what lay ahead and the magnitude of the decisions were like nothing I’d ever gone through before.

"I suppose back then it was a case of continuing to put one foot in front of the other and having to take the decisions as they came.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"As the months wore on and the impact on people became much, more difficult – the mental wellbeing and economic impact, the number of people losing their lives – their were days when I thought ‘I can’t do this.’

“But in jobs like mine, you don’t put yourself up for election only to do the good bits or the easy bits of the job.

“Don’t get me wrong, you don’t necessarily think you’re signing up to take your country through a global pandemic, but you have to deal what whatever comes your way. It’s part and parcel of the responsibility.

“I don’t want to sound trite or cliched. I certainly don’t want it to sound as if my job was harder, because it wasn’t, than many people working in the front line of the health service or in a variety of other jobs.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“But there was a sense of responsibility of having to take the decisions, trying every single day to make the best decisions we could and very early on – and this was hard for anybody in my position to come to terms with - knowing that in such an unprecedented situation we would get things wrong. I had to level with that in my own head."

Comment Guidelines

National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.