Embattled Sturgeon struggling to salvage her career
To suggest I was out to get Salmond is just absurd, she says But ‘it was right’ not to ignore claims of harassment
PRESSURE on Nicola Sturgeon to quit grew last night after her dramatic eight-hour session in front of an inquiry into the Alex Salmond affair.
Opposition MSPs said she had failed to account for her failures in her government’s handling of sexual harassment complaints against her predecessor.
Scotland’s First Minister was accused of ‘delays, obstruction and obsfucation’ as she gave evidence while the Scottish Tories, who are pushing for a vote of no confidence, last night accused her of ‘dodging and evading almost every difficult question’ and demanded she resign.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and a member of the inquiry, said Miss Sturgeon was ‘unable to answer accusations made against her, unable to disprove claims made by credible witnesses’.
She also said the First Minister was ‘unable to properly defend’ her government’s decision to persist with a judicial review of Mr Salmond’s case, which it lost in Scotland’s highest court at a cost of more than £600,000 to the nation’s taxpayers.
Even as Miss Sturgeon was giving evidence, Mr Salmond launched a formal complaint against a government official who allegedly leaked the name of a woman who complained about him to his former chief of staff.
Miss Sturgeon, 50, came out fighting, attacking his ‘deeply inappropriate’ behavjudicial
‘Horrendously regrettable’
iour towards women yesterday as she rejected ‘absurd’ claims that she has been out to ‘get him’. She apologised to the women who were failed by the Scottish government’s ‘dreadful and catastrophic’ judicial review.
She fiercely denied breaching the ministerial code after bombshell documents supported Mr Salmond’s claims that she misled the Scottish parliament.
She insisted it was ‘ absolutely right’ that harassment complaints against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement were not ‘ swept under the carpet’.
In her opening remarks to the Holyrood committee, she said: ‘ As First Minister I refused to follow the age-old pattern of allowing a powerful man to use his status and connections to get what he wants.’
Scotland’s highest civil court found the SNP government’s probe into harassment claims against Mr Salmond was unlawful, unfair, and ‘tainted by apparent bias’. It had to pay £512,250 to cover his legal fees and £118,523 towards its own costs after it conceded the judicial review in January 2019.
Miss Sturgeon admitted that the investigation had been ‘ deeply and horrendously regrettable’ but she denied ‘ prolonging a review that was dead in the water’. She has been accused of breaching the ministerial code by pursuing the case against the advice of the Government’s legal counsel who said they suffered ‘extreme professional embarrassment’ over the saga.
Her testimony laid bare the emotional turmoil she has suffered after the man she once considered her ‘bestie’ was accused of serious misconduct. She claimed she learned the detail of those complaints when she met Mr Salmond at her home on April 2, 2018, when he handed her a letter from Scotland’s most senior civil servant, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans, which detailed the allegations. Miss Sturgeon said: ‘My head was spinning, I was experiencing a maelstrom of emotions.’
She told the committee of MSPs that the root of her bitter feud with Mr Salmond was his belief that she
would ‘intervene’ in the government investigation. She insisted she had a ‘very strong instinctive view that I couldn’t and shouldn’t intervene’ but that she was ‘trying to let an old friend down gently’.
She added: ‘In terms of his anger towards me I think that is the root of it with Mr Salmond.’ But Miss Sturgeon failed to satisfactorily answer why her recollections were are at odds with accounts from other witnesses.
In a letter to the inquiry, Duncan Hamilton, a former SNP MP and junior counsel, said he was present at the April 2 meeting and he recalled that the First Minister told Mr Salmond: ‘I will intervene’.
Miss Sturgeon said she was ‘probably couching’ her position to avoid being blunt, adding: ‘These discussions do not take place in an antiseptic, sterile environment devoid of human emotion.’ She has also been accused of misleading parliament after claiming to have ‘forgotten’ about an earlier meeting with Mr Salmond’s former chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein, on March 29, 2018, when she says she was told ‘in general terms’ that a ‘harassment-type issue had arisen’. Committee members expressed scepticism about Miss Sturgeon’s ‘forgetfulness’ but she said: ‘People can be sceptical … but I hadn’t remembered the 29th meeting as being significant... I wish I had.’
She also denied that the name of a woman who complained about Mr Salmond had been leaked to Mr Aberdein. She insisted Mr Salmond was aware of the identities of the two complainants at their meeting on April 2 because he had apologised to one over a 2013 incident and researched the other.
At times appearing close to tears, Miss Sturgeon also rejected the ‘absurd suggestion that anyone acted with malice or as part of a plot against Alex Salmond’.
She said: ‘Alex Salmond has been, and I have said this many times,
‘Litany of lies and abject failure’
one of the closest people to me in my entire life. I would never have wanted to get Alex Salmond.’
A spokesman for the First Minister said last night: ‘In fully eight hours of evidence, the opposition completely failed to substantiate any of the allegations and absurd conspiracy theories which have been levelled at her and her office in this case.’
Last night Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross said: ‘The abiding memory of this evidence session will be Nicola Sturgeon proclaiming “I can’t recall” on repeat.
‘She dodged and evaded almost every difficult question.
‘The litany of lies and abject failures is too much for any first minister to survive. The evidence is overwhelming. She must go.’
Tory MSP Margaret Mitchell, who is a member of the committee, said: ‘Generally we have faced delay, obstruction, obfuscation and still not received some information that is crucial to our inquiry.’