Truss asked me how to get in to Vogue - Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon has hit back at Liz Truss after the Tory leadership hopeful called her an "attention seeker", claiming she once asked her how she could be featured in Vogue magazine.

Ms Truss had said at a hustings that the first minister was "best ignored".

Asked about this at an Edinburgh Fringe event, Ms Sturgeon said she initially thought the comments were a spoof.

And she claimed that the foreign secretary had asked her "how to get in to Vogue" when they last met in person.

She said the MP "looked a little bit like she had swallowed a wasp" after she replied that she had been in the magazine more than once.

During the interview with broadcaster Iain Dale, Ms Sturgeon described Boris Johnson as a "disgrace to the office of prime minister".

And she also hit out at the MP widely seen as the frontrunner to replace Mr Johnson in Downing Street.

During a Conservative leadership hustings event in Exeter, Ms Truss told the audience that "the best thing to do with Nicola Sturgeon is to ignore her".

She added: "She's an attention seeker, that's what she is. What we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we're delivering for them and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom."

Ms Sturgeon said that when she first saw the comments reported online, she "thought it was made up".

She said: "I am the democratically elected first minister of Scotland, and when you say I should be ignored then effectively you are saying Scotland's democratic choices and preferences should be ignored."

The first minister went on to say that the only time she had previously spoken to Ms Truss in person had been at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last November.

She said: "This is going to sound really up myself, so I am telling this story as much against myself as it is against Liz Truss in some respects.

"I had just been interviewed by Vogue, I had just had a photoshoot in Vogue - as you do. And that was the main thing she wanted to talk to me about. She wanted to know how she could get in to Vogue.

"I said they came and asked me. And I didn't really mean to do this, but I did say it wasn't actually my first time in Vogue. She looked a little bit like she had swallowed a wasp. I am sure she will be in Vogue before too long.

"I remember it because there we were at the world's biggest climate change conference in Glasgow, world leaders are about to arrive, and what is the main topic of conversation that she's interested in pursuing? And once we had exhausted that, it kind of dried up."

Elsewhere in the event, Ms Sturgeon was asked if she would ever speak to her predecessor Alex Salmond again - and replied "nope".

She also said that her "default" position would be that she would lead the SNP into the next Holyrood election, but that she would make a judgement about it nearer the time.

She said: "This is a serious job, and anybody in a job like this owes it to the public to be certain that they are the right person to do it, that they have the energy and have the appetite and are prepared to make the enormous commitment that a job like this involves and to be constantly be assessing and reassessing that."

However she pushed back on suggestions she might be looking for an exit, after Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said he didn't think her "heart was really in it any more".

She said: "On the part of my political opponents, this idea they have been pushing for quite some time now that I am just waiting for the right time to chuck it and to stand down and move on to some grand international job is nonsense.

"It's wishful thinking on their part. I've been first minister for almost eight years now, and during those eight years I have fought and won eight elections.

"So you can see why people like Alex Cole-Hamilton would want me to stand down and not be up for the fight any more. But I am up for the challenge."