Nicola Sturgeon is facing a critical week, with the expected publication of two crucial reports into her role in her government’s handling of sexual harassment allegations made against Alex Salmond. In the balance is not only Sturgeon’s future as Scotland’s leader if she is found to have breached the ministerial code – a resignation matter – but the fate of her party in the forthcoming Holyrood elections and its capacity to push for a second independence referendum should it gain a majority. The feud between Sturgeon and Salmond – her predecessor, former friend and mentor – reached another crisis point in recent days. Leaks from a special Holyrood committee revealed its inquiry had concluded, by a narrow majority along party lines, that Sturgeon misled it by giving an “inaccurate” account of her meetings with Salmond in 2018, albeit unknowingly.
Further leaks on Friday suggested the inquiry report would question why Sturgeon had continued to meet Salmond to discuss the harassment investigation into the summer of 2018 but did not inform the Scottish government’s permanent secretary until two months later. It reportedly concludes it is “hard to believe” she had no knowledge of concerns about Salmond’s behaviour before a media inquiry in November 2017, amounting to a further misleading of the committee. Things could be about to get worse for Sturgeon. An independent investigation by Ireland’s former director of public prosecutions, James Hamilton, over whether she lied to parliament about when she first knew of the allegations and breached the ministerial code by failing to report meetings with Salmond, is also expected to conclude within days. Sturgeon insists she stands by her evidence, but the damaging conclusions of the Holyrood inquiry prompted immediate calls for her resignation from the Scottish Conservatives leader, Douglas Ross. The UK and Scottish Labour leaders, Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar, said it was important not to prejudge the full report, but told a press briefing on Friday morning that Sturgeon should resign if the inquiry found she breached the code, whether or not it concluded she did so deliberately. Sturgeon’s supporters rallied overnight, dismissing the conclusions as partisan, and the leak itself as a breach of the code of conduct for committees. Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, said on Friday that she would not comment on unattributed briefings on an unpublished report, but she had “no expectation” that the first minister would resign. She said she had “absolute confidence in the veracity” of what Sturgeon had said, and “her integrity and professionalism”. Following the leaks on Friday, the first minister’s spokesperson issued an excoriating statement which described the inquiry as resorting to “baseless assertion, supposition and smear – that is not how serious parliamentary committees are supposed to work, and in behaving this way they are simply exposing their base political motives”.
He also alleged the committee had “deliberately ignored and suppressed” evidence which corroborated Sturgeon’s insistence that she did not offer to intervene in the harassment investigation on Salmond’s behalf. The convener of the Holyrood inquiry, the SNP MSP Linda Fabiani, said she was dismayed at the damage the leaks might do to the committee’s goal of improving the treatment of people who make sexual harassment claims, and that shifting the focus “will likely frustrate, not assist, the women at the heart of this”. Salmond denies the allegations against him and was cleared at trial last year of sexually assaulting nine women. The Scottish government admitted its own inquiry was unlawful and “tainted by apparent bias”. It currently looks likely that Sturgeon will continue to resist opposition calls for her departure, but her supporters are aware that the Hamilton report – which must answer the more binary question of whether Sturgeon did or did not break the code – may be more of a threat to her position. She still faces a likely vote of no confidence brought by the Scottish Conservatives, which was first mooted before Sturgeon had even given evidence to the inquiry at the beginning of March. A statement from the Scottish Greens leader, Patrick Harvie, on Friday criticised the inquiry as having been “hijacked for political gain and descended into farce”. If his party supports the SNP in such a motion, it would secure the majority needed to save Sturgeon. If she survives this momentous week, the row will inevitably spill over into the election campaign. One senior SNP source pointed to the “tremendous loyalty” within the party, brought into sharp focus by an election campaign and the opportunity that it represents in terms of using a Holyrood majority to push for a second referendum. Sources also point out that, while opposition parties are already leading on charges of “SNP sleaze”, there are benefits for their formidably popular leader in being able to go before the electorate as both inquiries conclude and ask it to deliver its judgment at the ballot box. Recent polling has shown a dip in support for both independence and the SNP, but Sir John Curtice, the veteran pollster and professor of politics at Strathclyde University, warned against over-interpretation. He suggested that “maybe coronavirus is not working for them in quite the way it was last summer” and that support for independence “was already falling before this started”. Some analysts suggest it is the vaccine programme, which voters may perceive as concrete evidence of the benefits of remaining in the union, that has had more impact on support for independence. Curtice said: “I’ve got a nasty suspicion that anybody whose life is not utterly oriented around EH1 [the Holyrood postcode] is going, ‘What the hell is all this about? We’re in the middle of a pandemic.’” He argues that Sturgeon’s management of the next four weeks of the pandemic may be equally crucial in terms of votes in May, with indications that some people are finding her approach, which they previously supported, too cautious. “Not meeting people’s expectations about getting out of the lockdown could matter a lot more to many more people than where we are with the inquiry,” Curtice said.