Despite the collapse in her party’s membership, the leadership election car-crash and the resignation of her own husband, Nicola Sturgeon is insisting it’s all sunshine and daisies for the SNP. In a final media blitz before stepping down next week, Sturgeon today pushed back against the SNP’s own interim president Mike Russell, who claimed the party is in a “tremendous mess” in the wake of a litany of scandals. Apparently when he said “tremendous mess”, he really just meant it’s “messier than we would like”…

Speaking to Beth Rigby in an interview set for broadcast this evening, Sturgeon said:

“I don’t think the party’s in a tremendous mess and I don’t actually think that’s what Mike meant. Some of the issues around the leadership election have, you know, created this impression of it being messier than we would like it to be but the process is fundamentally sound. 

The party is undefeated electorally. I’m struck by the fact that most parties who go through a process like this do it after an election defeat. That’s not the position the SNP is in. We’re going through what I would describe as necessary growing pains. It is difficult but I think we’ll come out of it stronger.”

Pressed on whether plunging membership numbers and back-to-back resignations can really be described as “growing pains“, Sturgeon insisted she is “bequeathing to my successor a party that is undefeated electorally […] That’s a brilliant foundation for anybody on which to build.” As for the small matter of the police investigation into the SNP’s missing £600,000, that supposedly played no part in her decision to resign. Apparently she was just jealous of Jacinda Ardern…