I feel sorry for generations of Labour voters and supporters who must look and wonder what on earth has gone wrong and what Labour is for.

Many people from many different walks of life have marriages that break up, and those are deeply personal, deeply painful but ultimately private matters.

I'm the leader of the SNP. I think you would expect me to say I would vote SNP in whatever constituency I lived in.

I've had particularly unpleasant stuff, and it has been reported that I've had death threats. Twitter and Facebook give people who have always been out there a platform from which to hurl abuse, and all I can do is try to block it out and remind myself that tweets are transient and get lost in the ether after a few moments.

I love talking to the public, I love hearing what people have got to say.

At these big set-piece events like the leaders' debates, that exterior of calm and serenity is nothing compared to what's going on inside most of the time.

I feel comfortable in a position of leadership, but that's not to say I feel complacent about it. I take it incredibly seriously.

I know you've got to earn people's trust, and you've got to earn it day after day after day.

Scotland never voted for Margaret Thatcher.

I take responsibility for everything that happens in the SNP as leader.

The SNP became a minority government in 2007, then a majority one in 2011. But Labour viewed what was happening as some kind of aberration. They felt the problem wasn't theirs: they didn't have to change; the Scottish people had just gone down this wrong road, and if they waited long enough, they would find their way back.

We've chosen to stay part of the Westminster system, but we don't want to be a forgotten, sidelined part of it.

I'm not going to do anything that sees a Tory government be likely.

I am quite a shy person. You say that to people, and they say, 'You do interviews, speeches. How can you be shy?' But, fundamentally, I am.

Literally every time I'm on camera, as well as there being commentary on what I've said, there'll be commentary on what my hair looked like, what I wear. Often it's written in the most hideous and quite cruel way.

I wish we lived in a world where how you looked or what you wore wasn't an issue for men or women, and it's by and large not an issue for men, so I wish it wasn't an issue for women, but it is.

I've not had a deliberate image makeover.

Scottish politics, U.K. politics, is not really like American politics in this respect. Not everybody is absolutely obsessed with image. I'm not saying the United States is obsessed with image.

I have said repeatedly I do want to take longer to eliminate the deficit than the other parties. Because I want to see us have the ability to invest more in our economy, in our public services, and in lifting people out of poverty.

Would I love to think that one day I would be First Minister of an independent Scotland? Of course.

It is clear that my predecessor as First Minister is frightening the life out of the Tories and the Labour Party. Long may it continue.

This government and the party that I lead will continue to argue an alternative to the Tory-Labour austerity.

Is it not typical that we have a Tory Government that wants, just like its pals in the Labour Party, constantly to talk down Scotland's prospects?

I think Scotland will become an independent country. I've always believed that. It means that if I'm right on that, there has to be another referendum at some stage. But the timing and circumstances of that will require careful judgment.