NICOLA Sturgeon has said she doesn’t think she will ever speak to Alex Salmond again.

The First Minister said she hadn’t spoken to her predecessor since the pair dramatically fell out over sexual misconduct claims which surfaced against him four years ago.

Mr Salmond took Ms Sturgeon’s government to court and was awarded £512,000 in costs after proving it had bungled a misconduct probe relating to his time in office.

Mr Salmond later claimed that Ms Sturgeon had misled Holyrood about the matter, a resignation offence which she was later cleared of.

Mr Salmond was charged with multiple counts of sexual assault but cleared of all of them at a High Court trial in 2020.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon may not lead SNP into next Holyrood election

Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon later gave conflicting evidence to a Holyrood inquiry into the Government’s actions, when Ms Sturgeon said she had not spoken to Mr Salmond since the misconduct claims became public knowledge in August 2018.

Speaking to LBC presenter Iain Dale at his Edinburgh Fringe show at Pleasance EICC, Ms Sturgeon was asked if she had spoken to Mr Salmond in the last three years.

She said: “Nope.”

Asked if she thought she ever would speak to him, she again replied: “Nope.”

Since their rift, Mr Salmond has set up the rival pro-independence Alba party, which although an electoral flop, has been a vocal critic of Ms Sturgeon’s independence tactics.

The former FM and former SNP leader was Ms Sturgeon’s mentor, and she served as his deputy FM for seven years after the party came to power in 2007.

Mr Salmond’s spokesman said: "The Former First Minister has made it clear that the cause of independence is bigger than any one person and greater than any political party.

"He has also already stated that as the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon is the obvious person to lead the independence campaign. 

“The Scottish Government has an undeniable mandate to hold an independence referendum, that is what the people of Scotland voted for and that is what has been promised by Nicola Sturgeon for October 19th next year.

"Mr Salmond urges all supporters of independence to work together to ensure that the democratic voice of Scotland is heard and that our right to determine our own future is respected now, as it was in 2014 when Alex forced the UK Government to bend to the will of Scotland in delivering the first independence referendum.”