Sturgeon testimony: Holyrood hearing turned First Minister into a liability for the SNP

The SNP strategy for Nicola Sturgeon’s long-awaited appearance to testify at the Salmond inquiry was one of carefully contrived damage limitation. In case she imploded under questioning, her attendance was scheduled for the same day as the UK budget announcements, to ensure it was overshadowed in the news media by that momentous occasion; in the event, this proved to have been a wise precaution.

Sturgeon’s own strategy was the only one open to her. She appeared, dressed in warlike flame red, taking the aggressive position that this was a longed-for opportunity to put the record straight and quash the many ridiculous rumours that suggested her behaviour had been reprehensible when, in fact, her character and conduct put Joan of Arc in the shade.

Her delivery of her opening statement – brisk, fluent and assertive – set the tone. She intended to use her authority as First Minister and her brash confidence in the righteousness of her cause to bulldoze from her path all the embarrassing items of evidence that had been piling up against her, claim that no substantial evidence actually existed and bring her irresponsible critics to heel.

She managed to sustain this approach, though it grew increasingly ragged, for almost two hours. She repudiated the account by Geoff Aberdein, Alex Salmond’s former chief of staff, of their meeting on 29 March, 2018 (the one that she “forgot” to mention in her original evidence). She was obliged to maintain that the meeting at her home on 2 April had been on party business; yet her husband, CEO of their party, who lived in the same house, was excluded, while Salmond brought his lawyer and his former chief of staff to the meeting.

She did not record its proceedings, as required by the ministerial code, because it was a party, not government occasion. Nor did she want the investigators to know she was aware of the Salmond case, for fear of influencing them. She did not inform the Permanent Secretary of her knowledge and contacts with Salmond until 26 June, when Salmond intended to take legal action.

“I must rebut the absurd suggestion that anyone acted with malice,” was one of Sturgeon’s gems: clearly this is one wife who does not read her husband’s emails. Her attitude towards Alex Salmond mirrored his obsessive view of her. Every fifteen minutes, she would launch into a Salmond eulogy (“He was someone I cared about for a long time”), giving her predecessor the “Parnell, my dead king!” treatment. This was interspersed with catty remarks about him whenever an opportunity offered: “Alex Salmond has a tendency to see most things as being about him.”

The First Minister’s past evidence had been riddled with inconsistencies. Today, she doubled up on that record by contradicting herself within minutes. Why had it been decided belatedly to include former ministers in the new anti-harassment policy? “The inclusion of former ministers was there from the outset.” Minutes later, in response to further questioning, this changed to: “Former ministers came to be added into it.”

Her attempts to gloss over outrageous government behaviour in a breezy, matter-of-fact fashion quickly became farcical. “We decided yesterday to release the legal advice…” This conjured an image of SNP ministers saying across the cabinet table, “Those good folk on the Salmond inquiry look as if they could do with some extra bumf to help them out – let’s send them some stuff.”

The reality was that, when the Conservatives tabled a no confidence motion in John Swinney and were seen to have enough votes to carry it, the government caved in, to avoid the enforced resignation of the Deputy First Minister, leaving Sturgeon next in the firing line. As for government cooperation with the inquiry, a committee member pointed out that 288 documents had only been surrendered to the inquiry last December, more than six months after they had been requested.

Sturgeon had the answer to that: “There is no intention on the part of the government to withhold relevant information from this committee.” In case that didn’t raise a big enough laugh, she followed up with: “There is nothing here that the government has to hide.”

Sturgeon’s technique was to adopt a chatty, casual tone, her replies to questions framed in long sentences with multiple subordinate clauses containing asides, reflections, distractions and downright waffle. Her evidence was punctuated by remarks such as: “I hope the committee doesn’t take it as a criticism…” “This is a personal view…” “I’m not sure I’m helping the situation here…” This last observation was the one incontrovertibly truthful statement she uttered.

Sometimes she veered into time-wasting philosophical reflections. “There’s always a different path you can take on everything,” quoth the Yogi Berra of Holyrood. For much of the time she sounded like a member of the committee; sometimes she sounded like its chairman. This presentation was clearly contrived to send a reassuring message (“Nothing to see here”) to the Nat-voting punters exposed to clips of the proceedings on the television news.

This imposture was ended brutally by Labour’s Jackie Baillie, the most effective member of the committee. Did Sturgeon know that senior members of her team were holding preliminary meetings with Salmond’s former chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein, to discuss the complaints against her predecessor? “Not to the best of my recollection.” The notion that her subordinates would act on their own initiative, within the control-freak SNP government, on so serious a matter is as difficult to credit as that it might have escaped Sturgeon’s recollection.

It was the issue of a senior member of her team allegedly leaking a complainant’s name to Geoff Aberdein that first holed Sturgeon below the waterline. Evidence from Aberdein, Duncan Hamilton, and Kevin Pringle, former communications director for the SNP, all corroborated the evidence of this. Were they lying? Apparently the First Minister had spoken to the accused official before her answers to Willie Rennie and Jackie Baillie in parliament, so her answer was not accurate.

By this stage, the goldfish had tumbled out of its bowl and was writhing, mouthing and gasping inarticulately. Desperately, Sturgeon waffled, disputed the “premise” of the claim, stumbling in a style that would have convicted her in the eyes of any jury. The leak to the Daily Record newspaper didn’t come from her or anyone acting with her authority… She didn’t see the decision report, although Baillie insisted it had been sent to her office. Would she ask the police to investigate the criminal leaking of a complainant’s name? She prevaricated, but, despite having painted herself earlier as a champion of women, would give no assurance.

Despite resuming her air of relaxed spurious cooperation, Sturgeon’s act was by now as unconvincing as a blundering conjurer who has accidentally dislodged a cache of dice, silk handkerchiefs and pigeons from his sleeve. When confronted with Duncan Hamilton’s evidence that, at the meeting in her house on 2 April, 2018, she told Alex Salmond “If it comes to it, I’ll intervene”, Sturgeon suggested she probably intended “to let an old friend down gently”.

She then resorted to melodrama: “My head was spinning, I was experiencing a maelstrom of emotions.” Why? Salmond’s predicament was already known to her. When asked why the government had persisted in defending Alex Salmond’s judicial review despite the growing pessimism of her counsel, she waffled about minimum pricing of alcohol – another SNP disaster – and claimed the government wanted to test its process in court. Yet it conceded the case before that happened, at a cost to taxpayers of £630,000.

By the afternoon session the proceedings became a review of a catalogue of SNP government failings that Sturgeon agreed could be described as “catastrophic”. So, why had no one resigned? Sturgeon appeared to suggest her experience of government had made her tolerant of people who made mistakes; sceptics might suggest she cannot afford to have them outside the tent, micturating in an inward direction.

The notorious SNP internal emails were not “fishing” for further allegations against Salmond, but reflected “a duty of care” and some of it was people trying to help the police. “I appreciate Alex can’t be objective about this,” said Sturgeon, herself a stranger to subjectivity.

It was during the final twenty minutes of the session that Sturgeon again fell into the hands of the relentless Jackie Baillie, who returned to the early meetings of senior members of her team with Geoff Aberdein, relating to the complaints against Salmond. She reminded the First Minister that Aberdein’s evidence had been given in court, under oath. Was it likely to be untrue?

By this point, the SNP’s last, desperate hope was that, 500 miles away, in the enemy capital, Rishi Sunak would slap a new VAT rate of 60 per cent on children’s clothing, expunging all other concerns from the news agenda. Sturgeon’s posture was no longer an affected demonstration of relaxed composure, but that of a beaten boxer lying on the ropes. Fortunately, the referee intervened: the convener objected to Baillie’s line of questioning, on the grounds that it touched upon the criminal case. Sturgeon’s closing remarks included the hilarious claim: “I’ve tried to answer all the questions as fully as I can.”

On the contrary, her answers were ambiguous, contradictory, evasive and often meaningless. She did not clear herself of any significant charge against her. Nicola Sturgeon can never now claim she has not had an opportunity to dispel the suspicions surrounding her: she had more than seven hours to set the record straight and never came anywhere near proving her innocence.

The committee hearing was a catalogue of government improprieties, repeated claims of ignorance of matters of which no first minister could credibly be uninformed, endless lapses of memory – a chronicle of cowboy government deeply shaming to Scotland. In any other country, the legislature would be preparing the compulsory resignation of any government leader with such a record. Her opponents accuse her of having broken the ministerial code 38 times in the course of the Salmond debacle; if even one-tenth of that is the case, she should resign. Sturgeon is no longer an asset, but a liability, to the SNP.

Today, though in a very inadequate tribunal, Nicola Sturgeon was effectively on trial. The verdict was obvious to any intelligent observer. From today, it is Scotland’s devolution settlement that is on trial: has it the robustness to halt the debasement of Scottish public life and reclaim parliamentary democracy from an incipient one-party state?