Nicola Sturgeon described Boris Johnson as “a fucking clown” as he broadcast to the nation to announce a second Covid lockdown in October 2020, telling her chief of staff: “His utter incompetence in every sense is now offending me on behalf of politicians everywhere.”
The former first minister’s damning verdict on the UK government’s communications strategy – which she dismissed as “awful … we’re not perfect but we don’t get nearly enough credit for how much better than them we are” – was revealed during evidence at the UK Covid inquiry, which is sitting for a second week in Edinburgh.
