Nicola Sturgeon’s claims that the SNP election campaign lacked “vision or big-picture thinking” are a “nonsense”, Scotland’s education secretary has said.
First Minister John Swinney led the SNP to a fifth Holyrood victory in May, though the party failed to win a majority.
Former first minister Ms Sturgeon commented on the recent Holyrood election campaign in a newly-published foreword to her memoir Frankly.
She wrote that the SNP “rightly put Scottish independence centrally as an objective, but didn’t aways bring alive the opportunities it offers for people in a tangible sense”.
Ms Sturgeon said there was a “lack of vision or big-picture thinking” from the SNP in the recent campaign.
She said the election was a “triumph for my party” but that there are lessons in the result that it should heed.
Scotland’s Education Secretary Mairi McAllan described Ms Sturgeon’s comments about lack of vision and big-picture thinking as “nonsense”.
She told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme on Tuesday: “I think that’s a nonsense.
“We have just been returned to government with an absolutely whopping endorsement of our manifesto.
“It was a historic election result for the SNP, the largest ever gap, if I remember correctly, between us and those who came into second place, so I was really proud to stand in that election alongside John Swinney on a positive future for our country, on always standing up for Scotland.”