Nicola Sturgeon cut a solitary figure as she walked into the UK Covid inquiry on Wednesday morning, sombre-suited and met by shouts of “Where are your WhatsApps?”
Over three weeks of evidence taken in Edinburgh, the inquiry had heard from those who worked most closely with Scotland’s former first minster during the pandemic, and the picture pieced together – often with some difficultly given the paucity of detail forthcoming from the Scottish government – was a troubling one: mass deletion of informal messages by senior figures; unminuted “gold command” meetings headed by Sturgeon that appeared to bypass cabinet decision-making; jokes from key civil servants about the suppression of information; accusations of politicising the pandemic to further the cause of independence.
So this was Sturgeon’s moment of accountability and also an opportunity to set out her own version of those “horrendous” months. With the morning headlines trumpeting a “day of reckoning” for a once adored politician whose “reputation is on the line”, the pressure was immense and revealed itself at several moments during her daylong questioning, as her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears.
Throughout the pandemic, Sturgeon was widely admired for her communication: holding daily televised briefings; addressing children directly in her remarks; promising honestly and transparency to an anxious Scottish public. Her approval ratings, already sky-high, went stratospheric as she excelled at her great skill of speaking human when everyone around her sounds like a politician.
But the past few weeks have challenged that pledge of transparency. The first polling done since the mass deletions became public knowledge included an astonishing detail, hitherto unthinkable – that 24% of Scottish National party voters said they did not trust the former first minister.
From the start of her evidence this morning, Sturgeon appeared on edge, defensive, frequently adopting that head girl-ish “I know best” tone that will be familiar to those who watched her interactions with the media during her pandemic briefings. But as the day progressed she grew in confidence, sparring with the inquiry’s lead counsel, Jamie Dawson.
She presented herself as reflective – Sturgeon is master of the disarming “sorry” – yet her repeated apologies rubbed up against immovable facts: that she pledged to hand over her WhatsApps knowing she had already deleted many of them, and that some crucial meetings had not been minuted (“a learning point”, she said).
There were lawyerly attempts to turn language to her advantage: rather than “deleting” messages, she argued that she “did not retain” them.
There was a telling moment when she was shown an exchange with her close aide Liz Lloyd from October 2020 in which she described herself “having a bit of a crisis of decision-making in hospitality, not helped by fact I haven’t slept”.
Attempting to explain her loose use of language to Dawson, she said she had not had a day off since before March, underlining her hyper-controlled, presidential style of leadership, which resulted in her being exhausted and unable to allow herself even a day off.
During the session, Sturgeon spoke repeatedly about her sense of duty – which made it all the more shocking when she said, in one of those moments of strong emotion, that a “large part” of her wished she hadn’t been first minister when the pandemic hit.
The emotion was raw, her face reddening and lips wobbling, as she apologised to those who had lost loved ones and angrily rejected the suggestion she had treated the pandemic as a political opportunity. It offered a brief window into the unfathomable pressures on one woman who, as she admitted herself, “sometimes deliberately [shouldered] more than my fair share of the burden of decision-making”.
For better or worse, this was Sturgeon at her most transparent.
