The Covid inquiry has heard this morning that Nicola Sturgeon “retained no messages whatsoever” from the pandemic. That explains her constant refusal to confirm which messages have been retained. If it looks like a cover-up and sounds like a cover-up…
Jamie Dawson KC said:
“Under the box ‘Nicola Sturgeon’, it says that messages were not retained, they were deleted in routine tidying up of inboxes or changes of phones, unable to retrieve messages.What that tends to suggest is at the time that request was made Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, had retained no messages whatsoever in connection with her management of the pandemic”.
While SNP officials were busy torching message archives, Sturgeon was happy to use the Covid inquiry for political point-scoring and anti-Brexit attacks. It doesn’t look like the inquiry will get much more out of her…
UPDATE: Messages between senior Scottish Government officials hve been shown to the inquiry:
UPDATE II: Video below presented without comment.
‘Can you guarantee to the bereaved families that you will disclose emails, WhatsApps, private emails if you’ve been using them. Whatever. That nothing will be off limits in this inquiry?’
— Ciaran Jenkins (@C4Ciaran) October 29, 2023
My question to @NicolaSturgeon August 2021
pic.twitter.com/OJDCBTESCe
Nicola Sturgeon has appeared on Louise Casey’s Radio 4 “Fixing Britain” series to congratulate herself for being “emotionally invested” in improving children’s care after completely failing to do so in government. In February 2020 the SNP launched “The Promise” which set out policy recommendations. The SNP then proceeded, as usual, to make zero progress…
The SNP’s “ten-year transformational change programme” to fix children’s care has been roundly disparaged as a failure as promised funds fail to materialise. Only half of Scotland’s councils have so far bothered to set out indicators tracking the progress of the policy and one out of 32 is on track. Last summer the policy’s oversight board admitted it was a failure:
“Sadly, due to the worsening circumstances for so many and the current pace of change, the Promise Oversight Board does not believe that delivering the original aims… is realistic within that timeframe“.
Sturgeon’s come on the radio to say she was called the “chief corporate parent” and “personally involved” in helping the kids. Then she blames the media for making politics about the “easy choice“. Guido wonders who led the Scottish government for two and a half of the last three years…
SNP MP Mhairi Black is making a few swings at her SNP colleagues as she heads out of the playground. She told Matt Chorley today that being in Westminster had left her SNP colleagues “not normal anymore” and that they “absolutely love being in London“. A cardinal sin among ScotNats…
Black is standing down at the next election because she’s “tired“, but has found the time to accuse SNP MPs of appearing “slightly more comfortable than I think you should be“. She added that Nicola Sturgeon’s cult of personality “always made me quite uncomfortable” and that, when it came to the SNP, she always had “issues with how it’s run or how decisions have been arrived at“. Guido doesn’t remember Black making any of her misgivings public at the time…
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross is coming out swinging in Holyrood today over the SNP’s Covid WhatsApp messages. Ross pointed out the Scottish Government’s “auto-delete” policy was brought in after government officials were told not to do so by the UK inquiry, and two months after Sturgeon set up the Scotland-specific inquiry. Ritual cover-ups always look the same…
Top ScotNat politicians including Sturgeon have reportedly torched messages “on an industrial scale” after saying they wouldn’t. Humza Yousaf is claiming the Covid Inquiry only requested WhatsApp messages in September this year, while Jamie Dawson KC clarified last week it was late 2022 when all ScotGov messages were asked for. The question is whether the SNP can claim that WhatsApp wasn’t used by officials in Scotland for any decision making or anything related to decision making. Are we meant to believe that?
Savanta have asked Scottish voters what words come to mind when they think of Humza Yousaf. The results won’t surprise anyone…
We asked 1,000 Scots to give us one word to describe Humza Yousaf.#SNP23 pic.twitter.com/jvEYy6fHLR
— Savanta UK (@Savanta_UK) October 17, 2023
According to YouGov 60% of Scots think Humza’s doing a bad job in office. When he made his conference speech to empty seats this afternoon the longest applause and a standing ovation only came when he mentioned Nicola Sturgeon. “Humza Useless” does roll off the tongue…
Nicola Sturgeon arrived this afternoon at the SNP’s conference up in Aberdeen, where she was immediately swarmed by fawning delegates and all the reluctant journalists forced to be there. Insisting she wasn’t “overshadowing” the incumbent First Minister Humza Yousaf – who himself claimed he’s “delighted” his predecessor has shown up – Sturgeon claimed she offered her “full unequivocal support” to the SNP’s new independence strategy, which bins her plan to make the election a ‘de facto’ referendum and instead focuses on trying to actually win seats. She backs this new plan entirely, even though it contradicts the strategy she laid out just months ago…
“I think in those circumstances it was right, and that was my objective that the party took the time to consider the way forward it wanted to adopt. It did that yesterday, it did that unanimously as far as I can see yesterday, and that position has my full unequivocal support… I am no longer the Leader of the SNP. Humza is more than capable of speaking for himself…”
Asked if she was the “Liz Truss of the SNP”, given her arrival has inevitably eclipsed whatever her successor is doing, Sturgeon said “absolutely not“. Truss could only dream of the kind of loving video tribute the SNP just gave Sturgeon in the main conference hall…
