I WON’T BE BULLIED
STURGEON DEFIANT AS SHE SURVIVES ATTEMPT TO OUST HER OVER CRITICAL REPORT
NICOLA STURGEON has said she would not be ‘bullied’ out of office as she defeated an attempt to unseat her – but admitted she would have quit if found to have broken the ministerial code.
Scotland’s first minister survived a motion of no confidence brought by the Scottish Conservatives over her handling of the Alex Salmond affair. But MSPs voted by 65 to
31 to reject the motion, with 27 abstentions.
An independent investigation cleared Ms Sturgeon on Monday of a breach of the code. But a cross-party inquiry into her government’s botched handling of sexual harassment complaints against predecessor Mr Salmond yesterday said by a majority that she had misled parliament.
Ms Sturgeon (pictured) told MSPs if the report by Irish lawyer James Hamilton had found she had breached the code ‘I would have been standing here right now tendering my resignation’. She went on: ‘The integrity of the office I am so privileged to hold really does matter to me. It is more important than any temporary
incumbent of it.’ Accusing the Tories of staging a ‘desperate political stunt’, she added: ‘If you think you can bully me out of office, you are mistaken and you misjudge me. If you want to remove me as first minister do it in an election.’ The Scottish Tories’ leader in Holyrood, Ruth Davidson, said the ‘honourable’ thing for Ms Sturgeon to do following the committee’s report would be to step down.
‘After all that evidence-gathering and deliberation, the committee found that Nicola Sturgeon misled this parliament – nothing can erase that fact, however inconvenient it is to the first minister and her supporters,’ she added.
Labour leader Anas Sarwar, whose party joined the SNP, Lib Dems and Greens in abstaining, accused the Tories of a ‘futile and vain pursuit of a cheap political scalp’.