Nicola Sturgeon did breach the Ministerial Code

[andrew]

I hadn’t really thought about the Salmond scandal since March, but a thought came into my head last night. What would’ve happened if, for one reason or another, James Hamilton did find Sturgeon had knowingly misled Parliament. She said she would’ve resigned if that happened but would she have? Who would replace her, and how would the election have turned out?

[MacShimidh]

Amazingly, I think this is the first time since last March that I've thought of this episode - which in itself perhaps indicates that the whole debacle was a bit of a storm in a teacup?

Had a look through my past comments and I think this one holds up pretty well:

Feb 3, 2021 21:31:24 GMT MacShimidh said:

I have to say that so far the Salmond affair reminds me a lot of Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi hearings. Those who really care about the issue have made a lot of noise about it (mainly online), but so far it has totally failed to break through to the wider public.

Could that change when Salmond goes in front of the committee? Sure, but it depends what he says and how he says it. I’m sure he will regale us in his usual theatrical style, but he better have something nuclear because one thing I’m quite sure of is that Nicola Sturgeon is not going to be brought down on the basis of a four-day discrepancy.

Now there was a brief period when the case had some cut-through (the two-week period where Salmond and Sturgeon were giving testimony to the SG committee), but on the whole, this was a complicated and impenetrable scandal that was largely being fought by the ultra-Salmondites and ultra-Sturgeonites online. Add to that the fact that the unionist press were never quite sure how to characterise it - at first hoping that Salmond would go to prison because it would damage the SNP, and then doing an absurd about-turn and completely taking his side because... they thought it would damage the SNP - and you had a confused narrative in which most of the public quite understandably couldn't figure out what on earth was happening.

For that reason, I think the chances of Sturgeon resigning were always remote at best. Unless it could be proven that she had told a massive and clear lie to parliament, I think she was probably in the clear (at least in the court of public opinion) no matter what.  Of course, an SNP without her would have been all at sea - you'd have to think that John Swinney would have taken over as interim leader because there were only two months to go before the election, and we all know his track record. Presumably Alba wouldn't have done much better than in reality - IIRC, Salmond became even more unpopular than Boris Johnson and I don't think that would change in this scenario. The real question, as I see it, is Labour - would they have been able to capitalise on a Sturgeon-less environment, particularly around Glasgow, or was there still too much rot for the public to overlook?

It's an interesting one that I'll have to stew on for a bit.