Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's former first minister, has revealed she has not spoken to her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, since he was jailed in June for embezzling more than £400,000 from the Scottish National party. In a podcast recording at the Edinburgh festival fringe, she told broadcaster Iain Dale that she now views herself as a 'mug' for having worried about his wellbeing and mental health earlier this year.

Sturgeon said Murrell lied to her until the day he pleaded guilty, and that she only discovered he was due to enter his plea a week before he appeared in court. She later learned he had been negotiating the plea for months. 'That hit me like a tonne of bricks,' she said. 'He was still lying to me right up until the day he pled guilty.'

Describing his behaviour before his sentencing, she said: 'He was very isolated over that period, he very rarely left the house, he wasn't communicative, I was a bit worried about his wellbeing and his mental health. And then, now I think: "What a mug, why were you worried about him?" He didn't worry about me. He didn't worry at all about what he was doing.'

Sturgeon added that Murrell's actions were beyond anything she could have comprehended: 'I don't understand why he did it, he had no need to do it. I don't think I will ever understand his motivations. But whatever that motivation was, he could not have stopped and ever thought about me. But I was, until recently, still worrying about him.'

When asked if she would visit him in prison, she replied: 'No. I'm not going to speak to him, I'm not going to visit him.' She also said that even on the day of his guilty plea, she was still learning new details about his purchases with party funds, which included a motorhome, a Jaguar SUV and a VW Golf, boutique cosmetics, iPads, and a pair of Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper grinders worth £2,618.

'Over the years, he never really levelled with me,' she said. 'The day he pled guilty, I was still learning about some of the detail of what he had done for the first time. I suddenly realised I had been living with somebody that I never really knew properly. That's something for me to come to terms with, and I don't think I'm there yet, but also for my family to come to terms with. It's a really difficult process.'

Sturgeon, 55, has consistently denied knowledge of Murrell's crimes, which spanned 2010 to 2022, and was not charged after a police investigation. She previously admitted an error of judgment in keeping him on as SNP chief executive when she became party leader in November 2014, but has refused to apologise for his crimes and denied ever 'consciously' seeing the motorhome he bought and stored at her mother-in-law's house.