{"id":15892,"date":"2024-02-02T11:15:40","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T11:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=15892"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:30","slug":"sturgeon-in-the-stocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/02\/sturgeon-in-the-stocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Sturgeon in the stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK\u2019s Covid Inquiry has trundled into Scotland and the media lined up for Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s evidence on January 31. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At one point, she wiped a tear from her eye, which gave the Daily Mail Scotland a front-page headline that read like a bad Victorian children\u2019s story. In fact, she got through the six-hour ordeal well – as is shown by the lack of subsequent Gotcha headlines. But there did seem to be a bit of attempted humbling going on. She was treated more like the accused than as a respected public servant. <\/p>\n

Sturgeon was on the stand for several hours. When she became emotional, she was not given a moment to compose herself.<\/p>\n

Having prepared carefully for the hearing, Sturgeon was able to call to mind specific dates and documents. She did not appear to have access to any notes or to the bundle of documents that the court had before it and when she asked KC Jamie Dawson if he would call items up, he simply ignored her requests and made no response, ploughing on with his own agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you believe her?\u201d<\/h2>\n

And when the next witness after Sturgeon took the stand, Secretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack,  KC Dawson asked him to give his opinion of Sturgeon\u2019s obvious emotion during her evidence.  Dawson did the tabloid hack\u2019s trick of putting his own words into someone else\u2019s mouth on the basis of them answering \u201cyes\u201d to a question. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe described that despite the fact that she believed in Scottish independence to her very core, she was in this medical emergency able to put aside those political convictions and prioritise the health and safety of the people of Scotland. Did your pre-existing assumption about her political convictions result in you failing to believe she could do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jack gave a typical response, at once nasty and somewhat incoherent, saying: \u201cI didn\u2019t believe it for one moment\u2026I thought she could cry from one eye if she wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n

But why was Jack effectively asked if he thought Sturgeon was lying under oath? What kind of question is that? It seemed like an abuse of the privilege of the inquiry. <\/p>\n

Bringing up Brexit <\/h2>\n

Dawson at one point jumped to defend the UK government over Brexit. The UK chose to carry on with that despite the pandemic. As part of Westminster\u2019s Brexit power grab it pushed through the Internal Markets Act, which took powers away from the Scottish Parliament and undermined the devolution settlement. The Scottish government and Sturgeon were accused of \u201cpoliticising the pandemic\u201d over a response it made to this – even though this was clearly a political matter. <\/p>\n

There was a minuted agreement at a Scottish Cabinet meeting about restarting work on independence \u201cafter EU exit\u201d. Sturgeon pointed out that this was in response to a Brexit paper that they were looking at, not a Covid paper. The UK government had declined to pause that in the way the Scottish Government had paused work on independence. <\/p>\n

Sturgeon said: \u201cI think we also requested at that time that the UK Government did likewise around the constitutional project of Brexit, and that was declined. The UK Government never suspended any of its work on Brexit. One of the reactive things that the Scottish Government officials had to do during Covid was respond to consultation on the Internal Market Act, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawson came right back with a defence of the UK Government\u2019s Brexit position: \u201cIt was the transition period for Brexit, wasn’t it, in 2020, so work was required on that?\u201d Sturgeon replied drily: \u201c I think that is perhaps a matter of opinion rather than fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petty Political<\/h2>\n

Sturgeon was questioned extensively about things that seemed pretty petty. For example, did the public health professor Devi Sridhar send over emails to Sturgeon\u2019s SNP email address? <\/p>\n

Given that the emails in question were scientific papers that Sridhar was writing about the progress of the pandemic, which were widely circulated, does it matter? Sturgeon confessed to reading extensively, sometimes through the night, in her efforts to understand what was unfolding. Sridhar was sending over extra homework. <\/p>\n

Did Sturgeon give Humza Yousaf a hard time at a cabinet meeting when out of the blue he offered to take \u00a3100 million out of the health budget and give it to business? Why did Sturgeon take as much 24 hours to get rid of Catherine Calderwood after she broke lockdown rules? Did she buy a couple of cheap mobile phones to divert office lines to for staff working from home?<\/p>\n

Sturgeon\u2019s usual practice was to delete WhatsApps<\/h2>\n

Where were her WhatsApp messages? Sturgeon explained several times that she had a practice of deleting WhatsApp messages daily, which she evidently regards as good practice. She said that the thinking that led to decisions about how to handle the pandemic measures were to be found minuted in the official records which run to thousands of pages. <\/p>\n

Sturgeon was entitled to be believed on this point. There is no evidence that this was not her usual practice. <\/p>\n

The search for a flash of knickers<\/h2>\n

But instead of looking at the thousands of pages of documents on the record in order to understand how and why important decisions were made, Dawson focused on a few WhatsApps which have survived and contain remarks that might be seen as embarrassing – like one anguished-sounding message to the civil servant Liz Lloyd. Sent from the ministerial car at 7am on the way to a cabinet meeting, Sturgeon confessed in it that she hadn\u2019t slept much and was having difficulty with some of the rules around tier two and three \u201cIt all seems so random\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true – those rules did seem bafflingly random at the time. The question that seemed to arise from this would be: \u2018Was having different tiers a good idea or not?\u2019 But the inquiry didn\u2019t seem to want to engage with that. Sturgeon was not asked to reflect with hindsight on the usefulness of tiers as a public health measure. Dawson went insistently on with his search for Nicola\u2019s secret. <\/p>\n

Decisions Sturgeon discussed publicly every day<\/h2>\n

But there really weren\u2019t any secrets to be found. As Sturgeon pointed out, these were decisions that she discussed every day in her briefings that were watched by most of the population of Scotland at one time or another.<\/p>\n

Many of us will remember the lengthy Q and A sessions she had with journalists after these briefings.  My late mother Sandra was among the many immunocompromised and elderly folk who found great solace in watching those discussions and getting an insight into the balance of risks that led to the difficult decisions that were being taken.<\/p>\n

Basic Instinct<\/h2>\n

Nicola Sturgeon \u201cgoverned by instinct,\u201d Dawson alleged. The evidence for this was that she said at one point that her instinct would be to cancel the fan zone at the Euros in Glasgow. The answer was – well actually she didn\u2019t cancel the fanzone because medical advice was to keep it open so No.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Many people who watched or read the transcript of Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s evidence to the Covid Inquiry may have been reminded of just what a good First Minister she was at that time. She can do the detail. She is smart, empathetic and forthright. Her engagement with the people of Scotland brought comfort to many in a difficult time. <\/p>\n

Did Sturgeon and the Scottish Government get every call right? Absolutely not – but she worked hard and honestly at a difficult time and she deserves to be treated with respect.<\/p>\n

First published on the author\u2019s A Letter from Scotland Substack<\/p>\n

Other views: Alison Rowat, Buyer\u2019s remorse<\/a>, The Herald; Dani Garavelli, Of course Sturgeon cried<\/a>, Guardian; <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Many people who watched or read the transcript of Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s evidence to the Covid Inquiry may have been reminded of just what a good First Minister she was at that time. She can do the detail. She is smart, empathetic and forthright. Her engagement with the people of Scotland brought comfort to many in a difficult time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":14145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[604],"class_list":["post-15892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18471,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15892\/revisions\/18471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}