DO THEY STILL EXPECT US TO BELIEVE THAT NOBODY WAS TO BLAME?

IT IS not easy following all the twists and turns in the evermurkier Alex Salmond scandal. Every couple of days, a new revelation breaks. This week, we got more key pieces of information that are potentially the most devastating yet for Nicola Sturgeon.

The new details came from David Davis’s speech, which was a masterclass in marshalling the key information in one place, succinctly revealing the depths of this scandal.

He broke down everything that has gone wrong and all the monumental mistakes that Nicola Sturgeon has made in excruciating detail.

I can’t quite agree with all his conclusions. I don’t believe there has been a conspiracy against Alex Salmond. He’s not a man I respect. But I do believe there has been a conspiracy against the truth by the entire upper echelon of the SNP.

And Davis’s speech itself, the cut and thrust of it, was one of the finest we’ve heard yet on this scandal. It eloquently exposed how disastrously the SNP Government handled this affair from start to finish.

Much of the detail we had heard before but there was one in particular that stood out as a new and damning piece of information, if it is true.

David Davis revealed a message between civil servants that suggested Liz Lloyd, the First Minister’s chief of staff, had been ‘interfering’ in the investigation.

According to those messages, which we haven’t yet seen, the civil servants said this ‘interference’ had been ‘very bad’.

THE initial significance of this message is clear. If the First Minister’s chief of staff was interfering in a sexual harassment investigation – no matter who it was investigating – that is wrong. These are clear grounds for a sacking.

It is a breach of process and we know the Scottish Government have form in this area. Their huge lapses of judgment and basic errors scuppered the investigation into Alex Salmond. Not only was their procedure flawed, as the Laura Dunlop, QC, review made clear this week, they failed to even follow the procedure properly.

More than that, if these messages are true, then somehow Nicola Sturgeon’s chief of staff was aware that an investigation was occurring. That begs a number of questions – how did she find out? Who told her? When?

Then there is another big question – who did Sturgeon’s chief of staff go on to tell?

Is it really conceivable that Sturgeon’s chief of staff was aware of these complaints in February 2018 and she didn’t tell her boss? Because that’s what Sturgeon and the SNP are asking us to believe.

Sturgeon originally told us that she didn’t find out until April 2018 about the complaints. She has since revised that story because a secret meeting revealed she actually knew the month before.

That’s one of the prime reasons we have accused her of lying to and misleading the Scottish parliament.

But even accepting the First Minister’s ever-changing story, is she really expecting us to believe that her closest adviser was aware of complaints for months, and didn’t bother to tell her?

STurGEoN has asked us to believe a number of implausible things. When the First Minister remembers what happened she then asks us to suspend disbelief entirely and accept a story riddled with gaping holes.

So what do the SNP say about all this? They deny any of this means anything.

They reject any accusations of wrongdoing.

They think, despite all these mammoth failures, we will accept that nobody did anything wrong.

Letting down those women – nobody to blame. Losing more than £500,000 – nobody to blame. Shutting down scrutiny – nobody to blame.

But sometimes you learn as much from what people don’t say. We heard the usual blasts back from Nicola Sturgeon in response to this speech. But what did we not hear? The First Minister did not deny that this message took place.

She did not deny the specific point that civil servants felt her chief of staff was ‘interfering’ in the investigation. Sturgeon backed her chief of staff – but she didn’t deny that message occurred.

I don’t know for sure the message David Davis referred to exists. But the fact that nobody has denied it, despite how incredibly damning it is, tells its own story.

Either way, what we know for sure is that the walls are closing in on Nicola Sturgeon and the Nationalists.