Nicola Sturgeon

When I was growing up, I was lucky to benefit from a first class education.

My pledge to you is that the SNP will put women and gender equality right at the heart of the Westminster agenda.

True gender equality in Scotland - and elsewhere - is still some way off.

I'm manifestly not the same as Alex Salmond. I'm a different gender, for example... I'm being flippant, but maybe this is a partly gender-driven difference: I'm very keen that we find a way of reaching out across party divides to find things we agree on, as well as the things we disagree on.

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 was very proud, on just my second day in office, to appoint a gender-balanced cabinet - one of only three in the developed world.

Voting Labour in the past hasn't protected Scotland against Tory governments.

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?

Too often in the past, Scotland has been sidelined and ignored in the Westminster corridors of power, but that doesn't have to be the case anymore.

The total impact of the Tory/Liberal tax, welfare and public spending changes has hit the poorest 10% in society disproportionately hard - and women have been affected even more badly than men.

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

Maybe unlike a lot of people who join the SNP today, I never had any expectation of a political career.