Nicola Sturgeon and the Covid Inquiry: another blow to her reputation?

During the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon was seen by many as "a cut above the others", said Katy Balls in the i news site – a leader whose measured and compassionate response to the crisis was in contrast to that of the "bumbling" Boris Johnson in London. 

How far she has fallen since then, said Balls. Already tarnished by her alleged involvement in a party-funding scandal, Sturgeon's reputation for honesty and transparency now risks being shattered by the Covid Inquiry. 

In 2021, she promised to hand all her WhatsApp messages to the inquiry; yet while testifying last week, she eventually admitted that, in fact, she'd "not retained them". So you deleted them, asked lead counsel Jamie Dawson KC. "Yes," she replied. In her defence, she claimed that she had only used WhatsApp to discuss mundane matters, but evidence from other people's phones has presented a different picture.

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'Cynically exploiting the crisis'

Moreover, her government had been aware that any chats risked being made public. At one point, a senior civil servant had sent a warning that such messages fall under freedom of information laws, alongside a zipped-mouth emoji.

So at that "grave moment in Scottish history", members of the SNP government were removing "all traces of their deliberations", said Reaction. To make matters worse, it has emerged that key issues were discussed not in cabinet but in the un-minuted meetings of an inner circle called the "Gold Command", from which even the finance secretary was excluded. What were they afraid might be discovered? 

Perhaps it was the degree to which the SNP was "cynically exploiting" the crisis to serve the cause of independence – crafting Covid regulations not because they were necessarily right, but because they set Edinburgh apart from London.

'Bordering on vindictive'

If Sturgeon struggled at times to separate her political instincts from her role in the Covid crisis, she wasn't the only one, said Ruth Wishart in The National. 

In planning lockdowns, Johnson was influenced by his innate libertarianism; Michael Gove wrote a paper on the need to protect the Union during the pandemic. Nor was she alone in deleting WhatsApps. The Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack, deleted his. 

Sturgeon made mistakes, said Chris Deerin in The New Statesman. So did every national leader. Yet reaction to her testimony has bordered on the vindictive. 

Even the most human moments, when she tearfully admitted that she'd sometimes found her job overwhelming, and regretted every death, were met with derision. It is right that she faces hard questions, but must we deny "our politicians any claim to decency or humanity"?