Nicola Sturgeon said she “should not be held responsible for the wrongdoing of men” after Peter Murrell, her estranged husband, admitted to embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the SNP this week.

The former Scottish first minister told an audience at the Hay festival in Wales on Friday: “My picture has been on more front pages in Scotland this week than my former husband’s has, and I don’t think that’s right.”

Murrell, 61, pleaded guilty at the high court in Edinburgh on Monday to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP between 2010 and 2022, while he was chief executive of the party. He spent the money on luxury items including two cars, a motorhome, jewellery and cosmetics. He has been remanded in custody.

Sturgeon, 55, has consistently denied knowledge of Murrell’s crimes and was not charged after a police investigation.

Speaking to promote her memoir, she said of the scrutiny she had faced: “It is the age-old cry of when a man does something wrong, well, the woman must have known about it, somehow it’s her fault.”

She added: “One of the things that has touched me this week is being contacted by a number of women who have found themselves in situations where a husband has betrayed them, and [have] shown some solidarity.”

Sturgeon said she was “determined to carry on”, adding: “I’ve done nothing wrong. So I’m not going to hide away. And that’s why I’m here.”

The former SNP leader told an audience at a literary festival in Ireland on Thursday that she was having the “worst week of my life”. She reiterated this at Hay, saying: “I’ve been through some tough weeks in the past … but this week has surpassed all of it.”

She said she was “coming to terms with the fact that the person I was married to for a long time is somebody I clearly didn’t know as well as I thought I did, somebody who misled me, deceived me, lied to me and put me in considerable peril.”

In 2023 Sturgeon was arrested and questioned by Police Scotland as part of the inquiry into SNP funds, during which the house she shared with Murrell was searched. She was released without charge and is no longer under investigation.

Sturgeon also condemned what she sees as the weaknesses of the “progressive left”. She said: “I think part of the problem we’ve got right now, and it pains me to say this, particularly on the progressive left of politics, [is that] we have too many politicians who don’t appear to actually stand up for anything or believe in things.”

She added: “If you’re not in politics because you’ve got a vision of a better society and a better country and a better world, you shouldn’t be in politics at all, in my opinion.”

She said David Cameron was her favourite of the five British prime ministers she had worked with. She said: “David Cameron was the one I liked best. Theresa May was the one I respected most. I blinked and missed Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak, I got to know a little bit, but I stood down not long after he became prime minister. And that leaves one: it’s fair to say me and Boris [Johnson] were not a match made in heaven.”

She said her “fundamental beef” with Johnson was that he “doesn’t take anything seriously”, adding: “I don’t think he should ever have been within a million miles of 10 Downing Street.”