One-time Covid messiah squirms while the stains of sin are laid bare
There was a moment in the depths of Covid insanity, when a certain subset of liberal opinion hailed Nicola Sturgeon as a saviour. Compared to nasty bad Boris, St Nicola was a beacon of hope and good sense. Now – with all the grim predictability of rain in Edinburgh in January – we’ve ended up here, with the one-time Covid messiah facing a rash of awkward questions. Outside the conference suite, an epic storm provided a fittingly ominous backdrop. Birnam Wood was en route to Dunsinane.
Playing a smiling, ruthless Pontius Pilate to Wee Nicola Mcjesus was Jamie Dawson KC. Dawson took the archaeological approach; chipping and dabbing away delicately, then simply letting the carefully unearthed mosaic of revelations speak for itself. Polite and clinical to a fault, if anyone was going to fillet the Sturgeon, it was he.
The Sphinx of Glasgow Govan used much of her evidence to commit crimes against good sense, reason and the English language. The apostle of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume, whose statue is a hop, skip and a jump from the inquiry, will be spinning in his grave. Speaking in sentences with subject and verb taking wildly divergent high and low roads respectively, perhaps her finest hour was when she sought to redefine “deleting” as “not retaining in line with procedure”. Rabbie Burns will be spinning – or possibly reeling – too.
After several attempts, Dawson finally got Sturgeon to admit, through gritted teeth, that she had indeed deleted her Whatsapps –- which she was on record as saying she would provide to the inquiry. “Did you delete Whatsapp conversations with Humza Yousaf and other ministers during the pandemic?” he asked. “No, I just didn’t retain the messages,” she replied. “So you deleted them?” “Yes.”
Not only were her sentences incredibly long-winded, they were delivered at breakneck speed. It was at times like listening to a drunk auctioneer, or, more accurately, given Ms Sturgeon’s creative approach to financial affairs, the rapid terms and conditions description in a TV advert for a payday loan. Baroness Hallett had to intervene several times, lest the stenographer suffer repetitive strain injury.
Sturgeon insisted that her administration’s decision-making, unlike that of Westminster, had been characterised by openness and formality. Awkwardly for her, Dawson kept producing agonising exchanges that had survived the great Whatsapp cull.
Sturgeon squirmed, and insisted that everything relevant could be found in the cabinet minutes. Mr Dawson reached for his fish knife again. Though he and his team had “certainly had access to certain action points”, they’d struggled to work out when crucial “gold command” meetings had taken place, let alone what was discussed. “Is there a theme developing, Miss Sturgeon, that the Scottish Government does not like light to be shone in the way discussions leading to decisions have taken place?” (Your Holiness, how long have you been a Catholic?)
Sturgeon conceded that there was “a learning point for government here”, as if it had only just dawned on her that outside of banana republics, important meetings between ministers tend to be minuted.
Next, she bristled at the suggestion she might have tried to make capital out of the pandemic. “The idea that I was thinking of a political opportunity just wasn’t true,” she snapped. Partisan, moi? Perish the thought. Voice quivering – sniff, sniff – the former first minister appeared to choke back tears and declared piteously, “it’s for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded”. Which is true, they will and they have.
How will the sainted Nicola be judged? Well, if this performance is anything to go by, it’s less a case of the Royal Mile becoming the Via Dolorosa and more “don’t cry for me Aberdeenshire”.
‘It was like listening to the rapid terms and conditions description in a TV advert for a payday loan’