Respect verdict of lawyer’s probe

JUST as political rivals accepted the result of a jury trial of Alex Salmond almost exactly a year ago, it equally falls on MSPs to accept the conclusions of James Hamilton’s independent investigation into whether Nicola Sturgeon broke the Ministerial code.

A breach would have been a resignation matter, leading to the irony that a woman would have been the only person to fall on her sword over the Scottish government’s gross mishandling of the complaints against the First Minister’s predecessor.

So far, no one has accepted the ultimate responsibility for letting down the complainants who made the original allegations.

It may be that the cross-party committee investigating the matter will pinpoint the problem, the process and the personnel who let down these women so badly.

Regardless of what the committee does find, a leak has already revealed their conclusion that the First Minister did mislead parliament.

Holyrood today will be faced with two rival accounts of what Nicola Sturgeon is alleged to have known and done.

But the committee version is weakened by the obvious partisanship of some of its members during their investigation.

The Conservative-inspired vote of no confidence is clearly nothing other than a symbolic and futile move now, one that reeks of political opportunism.

However, it is not the end of the affair. Some of the mud will stick to the First Minister and in a crucial and highly divisive election campaign we can expect a lot more of it to be thrown around.