Sturgeon branded Johnson a 'f****** clown' during pandemic, messages show

Nicola Sturgeon branded Boris Johnson a “f****** clown” in a series of messages during the then prime minister’s “f****** excruciating” announcement of a second national lockdown for England, an inquiry has heard.

WhatsApp messages between the former Scottish first minister and her then chief of staff Liz Lloyd also show Ms Sturgeon saying the Scottish Government did “not get nearly enough credit for how much better than them we are”.

The messages were revealed as Ms Lloyd, described as one of Ms Sturgeon’s closest confidantes, gave evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on Thursday.

They show Ms Sturgeon blasted Mr Johnson for his “utter incompetence”, saying it was “offending me on behalf of politicians everywhere”.

The remarks came in an exchange of messages on October 31, 2020 – with Ms Lloyd saying Mr Johnson was using “15 minutes between the rugby and Strictly to lock the country up”.

She added: “Let us never do this like this.”

Ms Sturgeon responded: “Their comms are behind awful. We’re not perfect but we don’t get nearly enough credit for how much better than them we are.”

The then first minister – who will give evidence to the inquiry next Wednesday – continued: “This is f****** excruciating. Their comms are awful.”

She then said of Mr Johnson: “He is a f****** clown.”

Giving evidence to the inquiry, currently sitting in Edinburgh, Ms Lloyd was asked if the exchange showed there was a “perception amongst Nicola Sturgeon and the wider Scottish Government that it was doing so much better than the UK Government in the pandemic response around this time”.

She told junior counsel to the inquiry Usman Tariq the messages mentioned related “specifically to the communications aspect of the response”.

Ms Lloyd said: “That is sometimes dismissed but communications is very important in a public health situation, people need to know what to do and why and to understand it and to trust in it.”

She claimed that day had been “quite shambolic in the UK Government”, and she highlighted “the sort of chaos that appeared around some of the decisions they took”.

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Ms Lloyd concluded: “We were clearly not very complimentary about their communications handling that day.”

Ms Sturgeon’s former chief of staff was the first person involved in the Scottish Government’s handling of the Covid pandemic to provide WhatsApp messages to the UK inquiry, Mr Tariq said, with messages dating between September 2020 and March 16, 2021 all handed over voluntarily.

While Ms Lloyd handed over the messages in July 2023, he said Ms Sturgeon had given the inquiry copies of the same messages in November of that year.

Ms Lloyd said when she received a request for messages, she had told her former boss she would be submitting them to the inquiry.

She said she also handed the messages over to the Scottish Government and asked it to “pass them to the former first minister”.

Asked if she was aware Ms Sturgeon had “deleted all of her messages from her phone”, Ms Lloyd said: “I think I had become aware at that point that she didn’t have the messages any more.”

Pressed on why she had retained messages when Ms Sturgeon had not, Ms Lloyd said she could not speak for her former boss and was “not going to speculate on the reasons”.

She added, though, that as she was a government official, Ms Sturgeon may have thought “well Liz has them”.

Ms Lloyd accepted she was “not familiar with the mobile messaging policy” of the Scottish Government – but stressed she would put “salient material into the official record”.

She also told the inquiry she had not been able to find messages from prior to September 2020.

“I regret not being to give the inquiry those messages,” she said. “I thought I had them. I have sourced them, I have done everything I am able to do, as far as I can, to find them.

“I thought I had retained them and they are not there.”

Asked if Ms Sturgeon had communicated with her using a personal mobile phone, Ms Lloyd said “I believe so”, before adding she was “not aware of the sort of details of what phone she had and who provided it”.

Speaking about the former first minister, she said: “Her phone would be a matter for her private office, not for me.”

Asked by Mr Tariq if Ms Sturgeon had a Government-issued phone, Ms Lloyd said: “I think she only had one. And who provided that phone is not something I can answer.”

She then went on to say Ms Sturgeon had “discussions about Government business on the phone that she had”.

With the inquiry having been shown a document from the Scottish cabinet dating from July 2020 stating that consideration should be given to “restarting work on independence”, Ms Lloyd rejected suggestions from chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett that it “does look a bit like the politicisation of the coronavirus pandemic”.

Ms Lloyd insisted: “My understanding is that we were not doing that (focusing on independence) at that time.

“It says consideration was given to this but was not done at this time.”

The inquiry continues.