‘It’s was right or wrong’, says Sturgeon for other people to judge if I

Nicola Sturgeon could not have been more emphatic when she interrupted her inquisitor to declare: “I am the first minister”.

She was correcting Margaret Mitchell, who had mistakenly given Alex Salmond his old job back during a seven-hour grilling of Ms Sturgeon at Holyrood yesterday.

It was, to be fair, one of the few indisputable statements of fact that has been made in recent weeks amid the furore surrounding the inquiry.

But it felt more than that, like she was reminding her predecessor and former “bestie” which one of them was currently the boss.

Before Ms Sturgeon was first minister, or even an MSP, she was a solicitor, and it showed at the hearing.

She squirmed at times but did not appear to be overly troubled by questions on the government’s judicial review legal advice, which was finally released to the committee and the public on the eve of her testimony.

Ms Sturgeon downplayed the concerns of the government’s lawyers, saying they had been even more pessimistic during the challenge against the introduction of minimum alcohol pricing.

Of course, her insistence that her administration’s handling of the civil case was “legally sound” is certain to be strongly disputed.

But as long as the debate is being had in the language of “interlocutors”, “sisting” and whether something is “stateable” or not, then few voters are going to be listening.

The first minister essentially just repeated her previous explanations for two meetings in 2018 when she found out about the allegations against Mr Salmond.

She said she had pinpointed the April 2 talks as the date she learned about the complaints process because that was when she was first shown the full details, and that it was a “moment in my life that I would never forget”.

Ms Sturgeon said she did not officially record the talks because she feared that, if she did, the meeting could have been made public, and