"I did my best". Nicola Sturgeon’s voice choked again towards the end of today’s grilling by the Covid Inquiry in Edinburgh.
"I am deeply sorry to each and every bereaved person, and each and every person who suffered in other ways." Tearful several times under scrutiny, she earlier said that part of her wished she hadn’t been First Minister during the pandemic, and was in tears as she said "it is for others to judge if I have succeeded."
How times have changed.
During the pandemic, the then Scottish First Minister’s approval ratings were sky-high. As Boris Johnson was criticised for dither and delay, Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership was lauded.
Nicola Sturgeon broke down during the Covid inquiry earlier
Reuters/PA
Who would have believed then, her fall from grace. The shock resignation last February. The sudden arrest last June. The blue police tent in the front garden.
Her once indomitable grip on her party and the independence movement gone. Her gender reform plans in tatters. The SNP likely to haemorrhage seats to Labour in the general election.
So today was a big moment. And the strain showed.
Her biggest regret, she told Jamie Dawson KC, was not locking down a week or two earlier in March 2020.
She denied playing politics with decisions. Though often she announced moves ahead of Westminster, and it was put to her she missed no chance to highlight differences with London, in a bid to boost her credentials and aid the move towards independence. That, of course, she denied.
And then the not so small matter of her WhatsApp messages. Like Boris Johnson’s messages, they are not to be found.
She admitted deleting them, having first deflected and said they "weren’t retained". But, on being asked directly again, finally relented.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Nicola Sturgeon denied playing politics with decisions
PA
"You deleted them?" ’‘Yes".
Sturgeon maintains that it was government policy since she started in 2008. And also that she didn’t use informal communication methods like WhatsApp to reach decisions or have substantial discussions.
There’s a few problems with that.
First, she said on TV in 2021 that yes of course she was keeping all evidence. And then there’s the matter of an email from civil servants specifically instructing that correspondence should be maintained.
She says she never saw it. Plus, she kept WhatsApp messages with her predecessor Alex Salmond from 2017-18, and was able to hand them over when he was investigated for sexual harassment in 2020.
Luckily for the inquiry, others retained their messages…so we know she labelled Boris Johnson "a f***ing clown", and also that despite what she said, she discussed reopening hospitality by text with former aide Liz Lloyd.
And then there was this. The then Deputy First Minister John Swinney revealed that there was "a real possibility" Spain would block an independent Scotland’s application to join the EU if they didn’t let their Spanish counterparts have a travel corridor in July 2020.
Nicola Sturgeon admitted to deleting the messages
Reuters
She bristled when Jamie Dawson KC ventured that the Scottish government "doesn’t like" to have "a light shone" on it, and at suggestions that, as Professor Jason Leitch messaged the then health minister Humza Yousef "she actually wants none of us."
Though she denied keeping too tight a circle for making decisions, she conceded that she didn’t "have a lot of patience" for everyone wanting to be in the room when calls were made.
Speaking this lunchtime, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: "Nicola Sturgeon was someone that, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, they looked at during the Covid pandemic, particularly in contrast to Boris Johnson, and thought this was someone that was standing up, telling the truth and being straight up with them….. I think there has been such a huge breach of that trust now, and such a sense of betrayal, that is going to rightfully anger so many people across the country."
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross was similarly scathing: "Despite her best efforts to spin, deflect and deny, Nicola Sturgeon could not escape two glaring realities: that she led an orchestrated cover-up of her government’s actions during the pandemic and that decision-making was motivated by the SNP’s political agenda."
At a press conference late this afternoon, Aamer Anwar, lead solicitor for The Scottish Covid Bereaved said the former first minister had shattered the trust they had in her, adding that Sturgeon deprived the inquiry of evidence through the "industrial deletion of WhatsApps."
What a fall from grace.
