First Minister must consider her position
NICOlA Sturgeon is in the fight of her political life. The verdict of the Holyrood inquiry is that she misled MSPs and former Irish prosecutor James Hamilton will soon deliver his view.
The First Minister seems more confident about that latter inquiry, but nothing will excuse her failure to be candid with parliament. She is well aware of the letter and spirit of the Ministerial Code and the undertakings she has given to abide by it. It is now for her to acquit herself accordingly.
Others who should think about how they acquit themselves are the spokesmen who work in her office. A statement released by them yesterday, accusing the committee of having ‘deliberately ignored and suppressed evidence’ and ‘resorted to baseless assertion, supposition and smear’, was an unjustifiable misuse of taxpayers’ resources to attack a parliamentary committee even as it was finalising its report. At best, it was a case of shooting the messenger; at worst, an attempt to game the referee.
There will be much talk in the coming days about the word ‘knowingly’, the term used by the Ministerial Code to describe the circumstances under which a minister must resign for misleading parliament. If it cannot be proved that her false statements were made deliberately, Sturgeon will attempt to argue there is no need for her to resign.
This is the way politicians think about honesty, as a matter of boxes ticked and rules dodged. It is not how the general public thinks about such matters. They expect a high degree of probity from those who make the laws, and the highest degree from the woman who oversees the whole process.
legalistic equivalence about how the First Minister misled parliament in a permissible rather than impermissible way is not going to impress them.
In the immediate future, this is about the First Minister and how she conducted herself. But the broader context is the Scottish parliament itself and whether the country can have confidence in it.
If the First Minister can mislead Holyrood, Holyrood will find itself commanding a much reduced measure of respect.
The First Minister should consider not only her own position but that of an institution she routinely accuses others of undermining. No one is undermining the Scottish parliament at present with quite the wanton disregard of Sturgeon.
Her concern appears to be hobbling on until the election and, if victorious, presenting that as vindication. She once pledged to stand up for Scotland – now the First Minister expects Scotland to stand up for her. This is not how a leader behaves.